


She walks like she's on a mission

by keysmash



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Apocalypse, Blindness, Community: spn_j2_bigbang, F/F, Hunting, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-14
Updated: 2010-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-10 02:59:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/94729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keysmash/pseuds/keysmash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was Ellen's idea at first: Pam was freshly out of the hospital, and since Jo was in the area, she should stop by. Jo only meant to stay for a night, but she wound up making a temporary home base at Pam's house. In between changing bandages and chasing down seal-breakers, Jo found herself in a budding partnership, in more than one sense of the word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She walks like she's on a mission

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [spn_j2_bigbang](http://community.livejournal.com/spn_j2_bigbang/), with [art](http://bloodnfire.livejournal.com/151116.html?format=light) by bloodnfire and beta by mistyzeo. Title adapted from Ani DiFranco. These notes would be really unwieldy if I listed everyone who encouraged me in the course of writing this, and seriously, how lucky am I to be able to say that? This wouldn't be here without the help of a lot of people, and I hope they know who they are, and how very much I appreciate them. ♥ Also, I've considered [Jo's Blog](http://www.supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=Jo%27s_Blog) to be canon.

Jo let her truck idle in the street for a few minutes outside Pam's house. She could handle this: she'd talked to witnesses in the hospital before, and walked into awkward situations, and a few times, chased down leads that went nowhere just because her mom thought it was a good idea. This was nothing really new.

She'd never checked on another hunter — well, on someone in the business, at least — after something like this, though. The rumors weren't clear on what happened, but whether Pam had her eyes clawed out or burnt out or just had a bad reaction to contact solution, neither she nor Jo were the type to stop in and chat. Jo didn't know how this would seem like anything but what it was: a sick-bed visit demanded by her mother.

She hadn't bothered to pretend she was on her phone, the way she did sometimes on the job, so when she rolled her eyes and cut off the engine, she didn't have to flip her phone closed and slide it into her back pocket. It was already there. Jo brushed her fingers through her hair and headed to the door.

She'd only been to Pam's house once before, but it looked the same: the same herbs growing in the flower bed, and the same sigils carved around the door, and the same black Jeep in the driveway. Jo noticed the _For Sale_ sign in the rear window as she walked past and then looked towards the house again.

She looked down at her boots after she rang the doorbell. They were still mud-caked from yesterday's job, and Jo had a moment of thinking _she can't see them either way_, before she scowled and tried to clean them off.

"Coming!" Pam called. Jo pushed one hand into her empty back pocket and shoved the mud flakes off the porch, into the flower bed, while she waited.

Pam was wearing sunglasses when she opened the door, over two squares of white gauze taped over her eye sockets. She faced Jo exactly, as if she knew exactly where she'd be standing.

"It's Jo Harvelle," she said, before Pam could start frowning at her. "You said to stop by the next time I was in the area, and I was just working over in Kentucky, so I figured." She cut off, unsure of how to go on, and Pam laughed.

"And you figured you'd just drop in on me out of the blue, for no reason at all?"

"Well, you know —"

"I've already gotten three different versions of this speech from people on the block," Pam said, stepping back and holding the door open. Jo wiped her feet one more time on the mat and came inside. "I know what the spiel sounds like."

"Yeah, sorry," Jo said. "I couldn't figure out anything else to say."

Pam closed and locked the door before turning back to Jo. "You just coming off the road?"

"Yeah. From Owensboro."

"I bet you're thirsty, then." She moved through the entry hallway with one hand stretched to the side, brushing the wall as she went. Jo stepped out of her way and when Pam passed her, heading through the living room to the kitchen, she followed.

"I'm not supposed to drink, because of the meds, but there's beer if you want any," she said, gesturing to the fridge. Jo opened it while Pam walked, slowly but deliberately, to a stool at the counter and sat in front of a mug full of something. Jo couldn't smell it and it wasn't steaming anymore, and she guessed Pam had been nursing it for a long time.

The beer was tucked in the back of the fridge, behind a few takeout containers and casseroles in glass dishes. Jo leaned against the counter as she took her first pull. It wasn't the best beer ever, yeastier than she usually liked, but it was a local brew instead of a national brand, and overall she approved.

"Thanks," she said. Pam nodded. She'd wrapped her palms around her cold mug. Jo didn't know what else to say to her.

"So, what were you up to in Owensboro?" Pam asked, after a moment.

"Shape shifter," Jo said. "Didn't catch up to it until yesterday."

"You took that by yourself?" she asked, cocking her head.

"I figured, that way there wasn't a partner for it to imitate." Jo shrugged and rolled her bottle between her hands, letting the beer inside slosh a little. "Everyone in town would be someone to suspect. Level the playing field."

"And it worked?"

"Got it wrapped up in under a week," she said, and grinned. Shape shifters used to seem far beyond her, like something she'd never be able to handle, but this one worked out fine — no more deaths after she arrived in town, and she snuck in and out of its lair without it getting the drop on her, and she'd killed and disposed of the thing all by herself. She'd been riding the buzz when checked back in with her mom, and it had been enough to get her here on a suggestion.

"Your first?" Pam asked.

"Yeah," Jo said. "I'd heard about em before, but that was all."

Pam hummed and then fell quiet. Jo took another sip of beer, then looked around the kitchen. There were dishes stacked in the sink, and, despite what Pam said, a mostly-empty wine bottle next to paper towels.

"How're you doing?" she asked.

Pam snorted and shook her head. "I've been better," she said.

"Yeah." Jo glanced out the window over the sink. "Are you, is it healing up okay?"

"None of the doctors really knew what to make of me," she said, grinning slightly. "So they couldn't tell me how to expect the process to go."

Jo grinned too, having made up stories of her own at emergency rooms. "What'd you tell em happened?"

"Hell, I don't even remember." She turned her face down, as if looking into her mug. "Stuck pretty close to the truth, actually. I told them I'd been working a séance, with candles and sacramental wine, and I went into a trance and woke up with my eyes on fire. I don't think they believed me, but, what're you gonna do about that, you know?"

Jo raised her eyebrows. None of the rumors matched up with what Pam was saying now. "Sacramental wine?"

"Yeah, I know." Pam laughed. "I needed something flammable, though, and they mostly bought it at the hospital."

"I hate having to come up with excuses like that," Jo said. "I don't know how you could even think straight enough to put that together."

That line would have pulled an explanation out of someone who didn't know how to talk around things. Pam just smiled and laughed, though. "That's the good thing about being out of your mind with pain. You've got a free pass for all the shit you say before they pump you full of drugs."

"And there's the drugs for an excuse later," Jo said, letting it go. "Do you have any work lined up, for the next little bit?"

She shrugged, then reached up to tuck her hair — frizzy at the ends, but greasy around her face — behind her ears. "It's gonna be good for business, actually. Mysterious injury and all that, second sight, you know." She waved a hand around. "It spins up really nicely. I've had more people schedule appointments for the next month or so than in the three months before now."

"That is good," Jo said, and took another sip. "Have you started taking them yet?"

Pam shook her head. "Nah, won't start seeing people —" She snorted. "Fuck, I do that all the time. Won't start meeting with people for another week or so."

Jo nodded and took another long pull of her beer. Across the kitchen, Pam raised her mug to her face, sipped, and then grimaced.

"I'm so bad about leaving mugs around and letting them go cold," she said, steadying herself on the edge of the counter with one hand as she stood. She picked up the mug and trailed her fingers along the edge of the counter as she went to the microwave, above the stove and roughly across from Jo. She opened the microwave and put her mug inside without any trouble, and it wasn't until she went to press the buttons, which were flat and probably indistinguishable by touch, that she frowned and turned to Jo.

"Would you set this for me?" she asked.

"Sure," Jo said, setting her bottle down with a clink. "How long?"

"Twenty-seven seconds," Pam said. Jo grinned as she punched in the numbers.

"That's specific."

"Told you I let stuff go cold too often. Thirty's too much, twenty-five's not enough." Pam shrugged. "It'd be better to just make another cup, but this one's already sweetened just the way I want it." She opened the microwave and got out her mug. The ceramic was deep green, chipping to show white at the bottom, and Jo couldn't see the tea inside before Pam raised it and sipped again.

"Smells good," Jo said. "What is it?"

"For you, green tea with lemon and a bunch of sugar." Pam took another sip and smiled. "If you were a client asking, it's oolong with blue agave nectar." Jo laughed. "Hey, half of what I do is just image maintenance. No one wants to know their psychic buys her tea at Target. Horrible for business."

"Man, that's like the opposite of what I have to do," Jo said. "The more normal I can make stuff seem, the less people freak out."

"Things're already too much for most people, by the time you show up," Pam said. She leaned against the stove, cup between her hands again, and Jo reached to get her beer before resting against the stove as well. "They want as much normal as they can get. Most of the people I see want the opposite. They're happiest when I give it to them."

"Guess I'd never thought of it that way," Jo said. "Is that really how it works for you?"

"For the people who don't know what they're getting into," she said. "I can cut the crap for those of you who do know." She elbowed Jo lightly, not jostling her enough to slosh her beer, and Jo smiled.

She glanced at Pam as she finished off the last of her drink. She wasn't wearing any makeup and the black polish on her nails had chipped almost entirely away, but her concert tee and jeans both looked clean, and she wore a chunky cardigan over them instead of a bathrobe. The house looked tidier than the last time Jo was here, actually, and it seemed like Pam was set up with enough food, and neighbors who were checking in on her, until work would start up again. Everything looked about as good as Jo could expect. If she got on the road now, she could make decent time before she called her mom back and reported in that Pam — a grown fucking woman — was doing just fine.

She'd just opened her mouth to start saying her goodbyes, though, when her stomach grumbled, loudly in the otherwise quiet kitchen. Next to her, Pam snorted and stood up straight again.

"Well fuck, I should've asked if you were hungry." She crossed to the fridge. "C'mere and pick out something. I've had all of this often enough that I really don't care what's for dinner next."

"Oh, actually, I should be going," Jo said, taking a step towards the other end of the kitchen, and through it, the rest of the house, and the front door, and her truck, and the road. "I need to get going again."

"It's about five hours between here and Owensboro," Pam said. "I bet you covered all of it today, and if you just finished the job last night, I bet you didn't get much sleep, either."

Jo shrugged. "It's nothing I haven't done before."

"Stay," Pam said. "I've got more food than I can eat before it rots, and you should know better than to turn down free shit at this point."

"I don't want to get in your way," she said, but she could see around Pam, into the open fridge, and one of the casseroles looked like shepherd's pie. Her mom used to make that when Dad came back from hunts.

"Not to mention your mom would have my ass if she heard I sent you off empty-handed, and I know better than to piss her off." Jo rolled her eyes, but when Pam moved out of the way, she stepped forward and pulled out the container she'd been eying.

"Attagirl," Pam said, and got another beer out of the fridge before closing the door. She opened it bare-handed and pushed it along the counter to Jo, while Jo peeled back the Saran-Wrap and started dishing up bowls.

.

Staying for dinner turned into staying for dessert, and then staying to clean up while Pam sat at the counter and told her where things went, and then to taking another beer to the back porch and looking the other way while Pam poured a few fingers of bourbon into her tea. Pam had a second, more extensive, herb garden out here, and beyond that, the grass grew tall, several weeks unmowed. Jo sat next to Pamela on the porch bench, and she pulled off her boots and socks to pull her feet up underneath herself.

The night was clear and mostly cloudless, full of stars around a thin sliver of moon. Jo sighed and leaned back, looking up.

"Nice night," Pam said, putting her mug carefully on the bench between them and pulling her sweater closed.

"Yeah," Jo said. "It was just humid and gross over in Kentucky while I was there."

"It'd been that way here, too. Didn't break until sometime last night."

Jo yawned, trying to keep quiet about it, but Pam turned towards her and then nodded backwards, towards the door to the house.

"You're staying the night, right?"

"Mm," Jo said. "I don't want to get in your hair."

"I've got a guest room for a reason," Pam said, and picked up her tea to sip at it again. "Besides, this way you can have another beer and not have to worry about driving somewhere to sleep."

"I was just gonna find a motel in town or something," Jo protested.

"And if you really want to spend that money, you can give it to me. Lord knows I'm not gonna turn it down."

Jo hesitated a moment longer, then shrugged. She could stay one night, she guessed.

.

She got up early the next morning, meaning to be dressed at breakfast and out of there before midmorning, but then she found a text from her mom — _emailed you, make sure to read it_ — and knew her plans were fucked.

"Do you mind if I use your Wi-Fi?" she asked Pam, as she dried their breakfast dishes and handed them over, one at a time, for Pam to put away.

"Course not," Pam said. "You have a laptop with you, or do you need to use mine?"

"I've got one," Jo said. Twenty minutes later, after digging through Pam's desk for a card with the network password written on it, Jo read the message from her mom.

> **From:** e.harvelle@gmail.com  
> **To:** enihpesoj91@gmail.com  
> **Sent:** October 02, 2008  
> **Subject:** nix the Sacramento job
> 
> Hey sweetie.
> 
> I just got word that Andrea and Martin are taking care of the job in Sacramento. I'm hoping you'll get this before you get on the road so you don't waste any time driving there anyway. I don't have any fresh leads for you yet but I'll text you when I do.
> 
> Tell Pamela hi, and let me know what you decide what to do. Love you.

Jo sighed and closed her laptop without replying, then took the computer into the living room. She found Pam curled up in an armchair with an iPod in her lap, and both ear buds disappearing under her hair. It looked cleaner today, less greasy, and it fell in loose curls around her shoulders.

Pam was wearing her sunglasses over her bandages again, and Jo frowned for a moment before putting her laptop on the coffee table and crossing the room to stand in front of Pam. She didn't turn her face towards Jo's, and after a moment, Jo touched Pam lightly on the knee. She startled a little but then pulled out her ear buds and turned to Jo.

"Sorry," Jo said. "I was trying not to scare you."

"Don't worry about it," she said, coiling the cord around one hand.

"So, this is sort of out of nowhere," Jo started, and kept going even though Pam snorted a little. "But my next job's being worked by someone else, and I don't really have anything else lined up, and —"

"Sure," Pam said, cutting her off. "You can stay while you find something else. It's fine."

Jo laughed and flopped down across from her on the couch. "How'd you know I was going to ask that?"

Pam grinned and tapped her temple. "Comes with the territory," she said. "Plus, I can read people pretty well."

"I'm not that easy to read," Jo said.

Pam shook her head. "Yeah, you are. Don't take it personally, though. All of you are. Hunters," she clarified, after a moment. "No one worth their salt has anything on their mind besides the job — the one they just did, or the one they're on now, or the one they're heading to. Not hard to figure out what you're going to all-of-a-sudden bring up."

"So I guess you don't mind if I keep working on it," Jo said.

"Nope," Pam answered, putting her ear buds back in and settling further into the chair. Jo leaned to open her computer again, already trying to figure out what to do next while the laptop searched for the network.

.

 

Lunch rolled around without anything coming up, though. None of Jo's Google alerts turned up anything useful, and she didn't have tips from people she knew, either. She was nearly down to just going through obituaries, and that took forever. It was stuff that needed to be done, but finding it was boring work.

"C'mon," Pam said eventually, unfolding herself and standing up. She tucked her iPod into the waistband of her skirt and nodded to the kitchen. "Food."

She stood at the counter and again directed Jo with what to get out of the fridge: a tub of hummus, a bag of baby carrots, some celery, a pair of apples. "If there's something else you'd rather have, then get it, but this is it for me."

Nothing seemed overwhelmingly better than what was already out, especially when Pam had her grab a loaf of crusty wheat break from the top of the fridge. Jo didn't get anything else out. Instead, she poured them each some water while Pam served up the rest of their plates. The carrots were easy, both of them just getting a handful, but Jo watched, partially curious and partially cautious, when Pam chopped their apples in half, and cut celery into pieces a few inches long, and served them each a dollop of hummus, scraped onto the edge of their plates. If she thought she was good to cut things up, then Jo wasn't going to get in her way.

Once Jo sat down with her food and ed at it, she had to admit that she wouldn't have known Pam couldn't see if she only had these evenly sliced pieces of celery to judge by. It took a long time, sure, but they ended up fine. She shrugged and dug in.

Pam put her iPod away after lunch and headed out into the back yard. Jo returned to the couch, still looking for work, but she could see Pam through the windows as she worked in the herb garden. Jo got up after an hour or so and got a glass of water, then stood by the back door while she drank it. Pam was on her knees, with her skirt hitched up in her lap, and apparently was weeding by touch. She had a pile of plants by her side, and Jo thought she saw a sprig of blessed thistle mixed in, but everything else was weeds.

She came inside after a few hours with a handful of cuttings, which she hung in front of the window, and mud on her hands and feet. "I'm gonna shower," she said, gathering her hair together so Jo could see the sleek, sweaty line of her neck. "If I don't turn up again, send in the mounties."

"Sure thing." Jo waited until she heard the shower kick on before wandering into the kitchen. She stared into the fridge for a moment before taking out a beer and another apple, and carrying them with her back to her computer.

Pam reappeared about an hour later, with her hair in damp curls. She had on a tank top and a pair of jeans, but visibly, obviously, no bra. Jo could see her nipples through the shirt and she glanced away after a moment, feeling strangely uncomfortable. She'd never really checked Pam out before, and she felt creepy as hell now Pam couldn't see her doing it.

"I've got to make some calls," Pam said, gesturing behind herself to her office.

"Okay," Jo said, gathering her stuff up. "Do you need me to go outside or something?"

Pam shook her head. "Actually, I was hoping — could you come read some stuff for me?"

"Uh." Jo put her things down again. "Sure."

She followed Pam into the office and sat on a love seat smushed against a wall, next to a bookshelf. She glanced through the titles — about half and half legitimate spell work and pop-culture junk — while Pam opened cabinets and pulled out stacks of folders.

"Here," she said, and handed them to Jo a few handfuls at a time. "Can you read me the names off of these?"

None of them were labeled on the outside, but Jo flipped open the first one and found a cover page, with info there.

> Phillips, Amanda  
> 34 years, female  
> fortunes: mix bag  
> $65/hour, biweekly  
> 555 213 9847

"Uh, Amanda Phillips," she read.

"Nope," Pam said, and shook her head. "She's been in touch. Stick her file over there, would you?" She gestured to the floor at her feet. "Who's next?"

Jo checked the next file. "Timothy Phillips."

"Yes," Pam said. "Read me his number, would you?"

Jo rattled it off, and Pam punched it into the landline phone, then cradled the receiver between her face and shoulder.

"Do you need me to go?" Jo asked again, pointlessly gesturing to the door before letting her hand fall.

"Nah, you can listen," Pam said. Jo closed the folder and listened as the call apparently went to voicemail. "Hey Tim, this is Pam Barnes. I got your message a few days ago so I'm calling you back. I'm going to start taking appointments again in four weeks, but if it's that urgent, I can get to you in three. Give me a call back and let me know. We'll set something up."

She hung up and then turned to Jo, who laughed. "I thought you were starting in three weeks," she said.

"Oh, I am," she said. "Gotta create some demand."

Jo laughed again. "Where do you want his file?" she asked. Pam reached out and took it from her.

"I'll take those," she said, and put it on her desk. "Who's next?"

.

 

Pam stood in front of her open fridge for a long time that night, then turned to Jo. "Any of this seem good to you?" She stepped to the side, opening the door further, and Jo came to stand close to her. It was just the same as it had been, takeout and casseroles, and Jo knew it would get old fast. She was already bored by it after a day.

"We could order something," she said. "There has to be a good pizza place around here."

Pam laughed. "You burnt out fast."

"I'm coming off a week of restaurant food," Jo said. "I've been burnt out."

"Takeout menus are in the drawer," Pam said, pointing.

They didn't discuss it beforehand, but Jo paid. Pam put up a fuss about that, but she let it go eventually. They ate outside, directly out of the box. Jo ordered a salad and cheesy bread as well, and they passed the containers back and forth.

"I should have popped a bottle of wine," Pam said, in between licking the grease from her fingers after her last slice. "This is as much of a date as I've had recently."

It was for Jo, too. Since she'd been on the road full-time, she hadn't exactly had time for dating recently, and since Rick, she hadn't much wanted to. The most she'd done recently was to buy drinks for guys she was trying to get info out of, and that didn't count.

"I thought you weren't allowed to drink," she said instead, trying to sound like she was teasing.

Pam snorted. "There are plenty of things I'm not supposed to do."

"Preaching to the choir," Jo said.

"Oh, I know," Pam said. She held out her glass of ice water and Jo leaned to clink her own against it.

.

 

They spent another few days like that — Jo helping Pam occasionally while still looking for a new gig of her own; eating together and spending most evenings on the porch — until Jo got a call from her mother.

She frowned when she heard the ringtone, and tried to keep her voice steady when she answered. Ellen emailed her unless it was an emergency, because a ringing phone might blow Jo's cover, and an actual call never meant anything good.

"Go," Jo said in greeting. Pam turned her face to Jo but didn't say anything.

"No, nothing like that," her mom said. "You remember the witnesses rising, right?"

Jo laughed. "That'd be hard to forget." She hadn't had a hunt go badly enough for anyone to come after her, but she'd seen what it had done, to other people. She'd be remembering it for a while.

"It was what I thought it was," Ellen said. "The actual witnesses, not just something like it."

"What?" Jo sat down hard on the couch, next to Pam. "I thought you weren't sure about that."

"Yeah, I was hoping, but it's not. It's the actual witnesses."

"Shit," Jo said, and her heart sank even further when her mom let her get away with cursing. "That means – are you sure? It can't be the actual witnesses. It's gotta be something else."

"What?" Pam asked. "What'd you say about the witnesses?"

"They rose," Jo said, and moved the phone away from her mouth for a moment. "A few weeks ago. You were probably in the hospital."

"None of them came after me," Pam said, at the same time as Jo's mom asked, "Are you still at Pam's?"

"Christ, I'm putting it on speaker." Jo pushed the button to change the call over to speakerphone and then put it down on the coffee table. The phone clicked a little when she put it down against the wood, and Pam leaned closer to it.

"Ellen, did you seriously say the witnesses rose?" she asked, arms crossed over her chest.

"That's exactly it," her mom said, sounding distance over the phone. "Jo told you when, right?"

"I thought I noticed something then," Pam said. "But I was so doped up the entire time I was in the hospital, I wrote it off."

"Well, you were right," Ellen said. "I take it no one went for you?"

Pam shook her head. "I don't usually mess with stuff that could end up with deaths. No one."

"Are you really sure, Mom?" Jo asked, crossing her arms over her chest. "It's the ones from Revelations?"

"Everything lines up," her mom answered. "And I've looked, I've checked with everyone I know, and no one can come up with anything else."

"Okay." Jo squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, took a deep breath, and opened them again. It was a clear, sunny day, and the living room was bright. "So, what do we do about it?"

"Nothing," Ellen said. "Not really. It's all going to be catch as catch an – there are so many possible seals to break that there's no way we can know which ones to go after."

"Shit," Jo repeated.

"Joanna," her mom said, apparently done with giving her a pass. Pam grinned at Jo, and Jo shook her head.

"Shoot," she said instead. "Is that better?"

"The best chance we're gonna have is to try to figure out which seals are being targeted," her mom said, ignoring her. "I'm trying to see if I can get some people working with us, but you know how these guys get, when they've been hunting a long time."

"Don't work or play well with others, you mean?" Pam asked, still smiling. Her jaw was tense, though, clenched up.

"Something like that. I'm keeping my ear to the ground, but it's a long shot."

"Better than no shot at all, I guess." Jo shuffled through the papers she'd been using to take notes and looked at all the potential jobs she'd found. She'd been writing stuff down to see if she could find any sort of pattern to it, but maybe some of it was actually seals. "I'm going through some stuff, see if any of it might apply here." She bit her bottom lip. "How do we even know what things are seals, and what aren't? Is there some list?"

"I'll email you what I've got," Ellen said.

"Alright, well, I should get working."

"She is a natural, Ellen," Pam put in. "Hardly stopped work at all, just changed the angle."

"I'll send you that," was all Ellen said. Jo rolled her eyes, but she didn't argue with her mom as they said their goodbyes and hung up. Once the call ended, she slumped back against the couch cushions and swore again.

"There's gonna be no way to figure out what's what, is there," she said, looking towards Pam. Pam was out and out frowning now, and she shook her head.

"There might be," she said slowly. Jo sat up again.

"What do you mean?"

"I might be able to get a handle on this stuff," Pam said. "I mean, I won't be able to pluck every single seal out of the ether for you, but if you can find me a lead, I can probably get you more info on it."

"Seriously?" Jo grinned. "That would – yeah, that would be amazing."

"I'll see if I can get anyone else working on it, too," Pam said, and stood up. "I've gotta make some calls, but I'll see."

"You need any help?" Jo asked, glancing down at her own stack of papers.

Pam shook her head. "Everyone's on speed dial. But thanks." She left the room, and Jo got back to her own work without watching her go.

.

 

"I've got someone coming over this afternoon," Pam said at lunch, in between bites of her green apple.

"Okay," Jo said. Pam hadn't met with a client since she'd been there, and she didn't entirely know what to do. "Do you need me to go, for a while?"

"Nah, it's not a client," she said, and then laughed. "And honestly, having random blondes in the house can only be good for business. This is the home health worker today."

"The who?"

"A nurse," Pam said. It's not like I can get myself to the doctor's office very well, so they have someone come to me."

"Oh." Jo thought for a moment. She wondered if Pam had health insurance; Jo knew nothing about what sort of treatment Pam would have needed, expect it was dealing with her _eyes_, and she didn't know anyone who could afford that out of pocket, without running some sort of scam. "So, it's okay if I'm here?"

Pam shrugged. "You don't have to be, but it's not a big deal if you are."

When the doorbell rang about three, Jo moved her computer from her lap to the coffee table and watched Pam brush her fingers along the walls as she went to the door. The nurse turned out to be a woman closer to Pam's age than Jo's, with closely cropped spiky hair and a bright cardigan buttoned over her scrubs. She followed Pam in and sat on the couch, at the far end from Jo, like it was her normal place.

"This is my friend Jo," Pam said, taking her seat in the armchair again. "She's staying a few days. Jo, this is Marcela, who's been stuck with me for the next few weeks."

"And it's been delightful so far," Marcela said dryly, but with a grin, as held out a hand to Jo.

Jo shook and laughed. "I bet. She gets downright combative sometimes, doesn't she?"

"I'm right here," Pam said, grinning, too.

"You don't exactly let people forget," Marcela said. She glanced at Jo one more time, then turned to completely face Pam. "Do you mind taking the bandages off for me?"

She shook her head and pulled off the sunglasses first, and then started gingerly peeling at the tape on one side of her face. "I washed my hands right before you got here," she said.

"Good," Marcela answered. "Have you had anything unusual? Tenderness, swelling, oozing?"

Pam dropped the dressing onto the table between them all as she went. Jo watched for a moment, then glanced away. She'd been around serious wounds before, and had done all the care on a nasty gash on her thigh by herself, but it seemed too intimate for her to see Pam without her bandages now, since Pam had been so careful up until now to keep even the bandages covered up, much less her empty sockets.

She'd specifically asked Pam if it was okay for her to be here, though, and from her spot at the end of the couch, next to the wall, she'd have to walk over Marcela's legs, interrupting everything, if she wanted to get up. She chewed on the inside of her bottom lip and stayed put.

When the bandages were off, Pam kept her eyelids closed for a moment, then tossed her hair back from her face and opened them. Nothing but darkness, with the red edges fading to pink. Marcela pulled on gloves and came to crouch in front of her chair.

"Here are my hands," she said, and put two fingers from each hand on Pamela's temples. Jo watched her turn Pam's face from side to side. Pam swallowed hard but let her. Finally, Marcela tilted her face up and down, then nodded and let go. "Looking great," she said, and then checked the pile of dressings. "You're still changing them at night?"

Pam nodded, letting her eyelids fall closed again. "Right before bed."

"And that's been going okay?"

Pam shrugged. "Not the easiest thing in the world, but I get it done." She snorted. "It's not like I'll put my eye out or anything."

Marcela glanced at Jo, who worried she'd been paying too much attention until Marcela smiled at her and then turned back to Pam. "If the two of you are comfortable with it, I'd like Jo to start helping you with that."

Jo raised her eyebrows, and across the table, Pam did the same thing. She took a moment to study Pam's expression, now that she could see all of it, and then shook her head. "I don't know that that's the best idea."

"I can show you what to do," Marcela said. "It's nothing hard, mostly just cutting bandages so Pam can have them ready."

"I really don't need someone doing that for me," Pam said. She picked up her sunglasses from her lap and put them back on.

"Yes, actually, you do." Marcela stood and went back to her place on the couch. "We've talked about this, Pam. You're going to relearn those skills pretty soon, but at this point, you don't have them. You can joke all you want, but I don't want you juggling scissors while you're trying to keep things clean." She shrugged. "That's why I've been pre-cutting everything for you up until now, but having Jo do it with you is actually a good step towards taking over it for yourself. It's healthy to know when you need help, and who you can count on to give it to you."

Pam didn't answer right away, so Marcela changed the topic to her pain meds. Jo sat through the rest of the appointment without saying anything, but before Marcela left, she showed Jo the different lengths of tape and gauze to cut for Pam, and how to keep them clean when cutting, and the order in which Pam would need them, and the best way to wash her hands, before they started.

Pam reached for her glass of ice water when Marcela was gathering her things together. It was mostly empty, and the ice sloshed through what water was left to clink against the glass. "Do either of you want something?" she asked, standing.

"No, I'm on my way," Marcela said. "Thank you, though."

"I'm good, too," Jo said. "Go on, I'll see her out."

Pam frowned, hidden again behind her bandages and her glasses, but headed into the kitchen. Jo walked Marcela to the door and stood with her while she dug her keys out of her purse.

"I really am glad you're here," she said, then found her sunglasses and put them atop her head. "I'd been worried about her sometimes, not having someone with her on a regular basis."

Jo crossed her arms and wrapped her hands around her biceps, which where bare in the tank she'd worn that day. "Yeah, well, you know."

"People heal better when they have a loved one around, especially a partner. She told me she'd had problems with her last girlfriend, but if the two of you are working past that, I think it's great," she said, and then held up her keys triumphantly. "Ah, here we go." She opened the door and closed it behind herself before Jo could correct her assumption. Jo blinked a few times, then watched Marcela get into her car and drive off. She hadn't even known Pam was into women, much less that she'd had serious relationships with women. It must have been serious, if she'd told people about it after the fact. Once the car was down the block, she headed off to tell Pam.

"I'm going to lie down for a while," Pam said, though, when Jo ran across her in the hallway, and she disappeared into her room, closing the door behind her. Jo stared after her, all her amused good humor fading away, and then headed into the living room. The leftover strips Marcela had cut, both to bandage Pam up again and as demonstration for Jo, were in a pile on the coffee table. Jo stared at them for a moment before shaking her head and continuing into the kitchen, getting that glass of water after all.

.

 

Dinner was quiet that night, leftover Thai and cups of tea that cooled too quickly, and Pam sat in the living room instead of going to the porch with Jo. Alone, it was boring instead of peaceful, and Jo headed back inside earlier than she would have otherwise.

Pam was on the couch with an old rerun of _The Simpsons_ on the TV.I It was the first she turned it on since Jo had been there, and Jo stopped, feeling awkward, just inside the door. Pam patted the cushion next to her, though, and nodded towards her side of the room, so Jo crossed the room and sank down next to her.

"I mostly remember what happens in this one," Pam said. "Everyone but Homer's been employee of the month, right?"

There was a framed picture of a metal rod on the screen, followed by a shot of Homer looking murderous. Jo laughed. "Yeah, that's the one."

"Thought so." Pam sighed. "New TV's weird like this. I miss half the stuff that's going on."

Jo hummed, glancing at Pam.

"Marcela said I should try to get into radio more, like the old plays and stuff. And podcasts." She laughed. "I couldn't tell if she was being serious or not."

Jo turned to face Pam full on. "About what she said today — if you don't want me in your way, then, I mean, I don't have to. It's not like she's gonna know."

"Until she shows up next time and everything's all ragged and messy because I cut it myself." Pam shook her head. "No, it's fine. She sort of had a good point, actually. I probably can't keep things sterile yet, so, whatever, it's fine."

"Okay," Jo said after a moment. "Sure, then, if you want."

Pam just smiled a little, turning up one side of her mouth, and settled further into the couch.

They sat through the rest of the episode and then most of another before Pam turned the TV off and stood. "I'm gonna go shower," she said. "I usually put on the new bandages after that, so I'll call you when I'm ready."

Jo nodded. "Yeah, great."

Pam handed her the remote when she left the room, but Jo didn't turn anything on. Instead, she stretched out lengthwise on the couch, with her head on the arm and her feet in the warm spot left behind by Pam, and thought back through the things Marcela had shown her. None of it had been new information. Her mom insisted Jo take an advanced first-aid course with her, back when the two of them were figuring out how to start working together — Jo on the move and her mom working the intel back home — and things like washing her hands and not getting bandages dirty had definitely been covered there. She'd never gotten these instructions with someone she'd be bandaging up later listening in, though, and it made Jo hesitate. She swallowed hard and ran through the steps again.

She didn't move when the water cut off, and she listened to the very faint noises of Pam getting ready for bed. Usually, she'd try to categorize them, to get her practice in wherever she could, but it felt weird doing that to Pam. Jo might be lying here listening creepily, but she'd draw a line somewhere.

Eventually, Pam opened the door to her bedroom. "You good to do it now?" she asked.

"Yeah," Jo said, and rolled off the couch and onto her feet.

Pam 's hair was wet, combed away from her face so that it hung in a smooth, dark fall down her back, over a silky, peacock-blue bathrobe. The robe hung loosely around her breasts, not tied very tightly, and Jo could make out the outline of her nipples through the fabric. She had to make herself look back to Pam's face.

"Tell me if I flash you," Pam said, as if she could tell precisely what Jo's silence meant. "I don't usually sleep in anything when it's this warm out, and it's not like I can tell if everything's where it's supposed to be."

"It's where it's supposed to be," Jo said, then cleared her throat and shook her head. "Do you have soap in there?"

"By the sink," Pam said, sounding amused. Jo headed to the bathroom and, sure enough, there was a tall bottle of antibacterial soap by the faucet. She turned the water on and let it warm without glancing at Pam's reflection as she came to stand behind her, just where she'd need to be to look over Jo's shoulder.

"Let it get hot," she said, almost into Jo's ear. She could feel her hair fluttering slightly with Pam's breath and realized she should probably have pulled it back into a ponytail first. She thought about how she'd have to do that again the next night, and then flushed at the idea of being back here the next night, with Pam wet and nearly naked, talking into her ear.

"So it's almost too hot," Pam continued, not having moved away. Jo put her fingers in the stream and hissed at the heat, and Pam hummed behind her. "Good. Both hands, now. All the way up to your elbows."

Jo did it, breathing through her mouth before she adjusted to the temperature. It wasn't hot enough to burn, but it was _almost_ too hot, certainly uncomfortable, just the way Pam told her to do it. It was all she could think about, the heat on her fingers and her wrists and her forearms, until suddenly it was fine, _she_ was fine, and she could concentrate on Pam again, right behind her. She glanced at Pam's reflection, unable to keep herself from looking away any longer, and found Pam smiling gently — not precisely at Jo, but it warmed her anyway.

"Soap, now," Pam said, and nodded towards the bottle. "Two pumps. It'll foam."

Jo nodded. She felt stupid for answering Pam that way, but she didn't want to speak up, if she didn't need to. She wanted to keep her concentration. The foam filled her left palm, light and airy and already smelling sharp, medicinal. She waited for a moment, instead of soaping up immediately, and Pam hummed behind her, low in her ear, before saying, "Scrub. Both arms. Make sure to get between your fingers. I'll tell you when it's long enough."

Jo swallowed and nodded again, then started working the foam over her hands. She began with her palms and the back of her hands, spreading the bubbles to make more of them, and then worked the suds up her arms. The heat of the water had faded and the bubbles felt cool on her skin as she scrubbed. She washed the skin between her fingers last, almost tickling herself as she ran the fingers of one hand between the fingers of another. Pam hadn't told her to stop by the time she thought she'd washed everything long enough, and instead of mentioning it, she started washing again. It was Pam she'd be touching, after all, and Jo figured Pam got to dictate how clean she was.

"Good," Pam said eventually, low under the rush of the faucet. "Rinse. Turn off the water when you're done. Use your elbow for the faucet, not your hands."

Jo scooped palmfuls of water over her, then worked her hands together under the faucet, and then leaned to turn it off, being careful not to push her hands against anything.

"Good," Pam repeated, sounding loud now that the room was quieter. "Towel's over there." She nodded to the wall on her other side but didn't move away, so Jo needed to reach around her to dry off. Pam smelled clean, like soap more than anything else, and Jo bit her bottom lip as she tried to keep from brushing up against Jo's robe. It was a medical towel, clean and untouched, and the one Jo used sat on top of a stack of others, all in a pop-up box like huge Kleenexes.

"Trash's over there," Pam said, gesturing to the far side of the toilet, and Jo found herself almost relieved to have the chance to step away from Pam. Only almost, though. It was just as nice to get the chance to come back again. This time, Jo stood at the end of the counter, between the supplies and Pamela, and faced her, waiting.

"Gloves next," Pam said. Jo pulled two from a box among the other supplies. They felt strange against her hands, the insides slightly powdery, and her hands were almost disconnected from the rest of her. They were like someone else's, not her own at all.

"What do you need first?" Jo asked. Her voice sounded quieter than she's meant to speak.

"Ointment," Pam said. Jo picked up a crimped metal tube from the basket, with a prescription sticker on its side.

"How much?" she asked. Marcela went over this with her, but she wanted to hear Pam say it now.

"Pea-sized amount," she said, and held out one of her index fingers. Jo squeezed, and busied herself with putting the lid back on and the tube away while Pam bit her bottom lip and rubbed the ointment over her wounds.

"One of the gauze squares next."

Jo nodded and tore the top off one of the paper-wrapped packets, trying not to rip the dressing inside. The gauze inside was folded tightly onto itself, so it was about an eighth of an inch thick. Jo picked it up by one corner and put it in Pam's outstretched hand, where it almost entirely covered her palm.

"Good," Pam said. "Cut me some tape. Four pieces, a little longer than the edges of the gauze." She kept her hand in place, so Jo could see. "Let me know when you're ready."

Jo picked up the wheel of tape and tried a few times before she caught the edge of the strip with her fingernail. She cut each one as long as Pam wanted, sticking the edge of each strip to the back of her glove while she cut the rest.

"Got it," she said, and put the tape and scissors away.

"Hand me one," Pam said. Jo gave one to her and Pam covered her left eye socket with the gauze, then smoothed the tape into place above her eyebrow. She held out her hand again and said, "Another," and after Jo gave it to her, she worked it along the inside edge, following the curve of her nose. "Another," she repeated two more times, taping down the rest of the square, so she looked like some strange pirate when she let her hands drop.

"Alright," she said, and sighed. Jo let out a huge breath as well, and then glanced back to Pam. "Let's do the next one."

They repeated the process for the other eye, and when Pam finished, Jo set to gathering up the trash instead of looking her full in the face. Pam stood there while Jo got everything cleared away. She didn't back away, and finally Jo wet her lips before saying, "Alright, is there more?"

"No." Pam shook her head. "But — thank you. This did wind up being better than I thought it would."

"You're welcome," Jo said, and ducked her head. "Do I need to do anything else?"

"No," Pam said, finally stepping back, out of the bathroom and more into her bedroom, out of Jo's way. "That's all."

"Alright," Jo said. "I'm probably gonna get in bed, then."

"Yeah, me too." Pam grinned and then turned around all the way, heading towards her bed. "Night."

"Night," Jo repeated, letting herself out and closing the door after her. was already tucked into the guest bed when she realized she hadn't turned off the light in Pam's bedroom. She didn't know if Pam would have done it herself; maybe she was out of the habit already. It wasn't as though Pam would know, but she lay there for a long time, wondering if Pam was sleeping with the lights on, or if they were both lying in the darkness.

.

 

One night of helping Pam change her dressings quickly turned into two, then five, and then another full week Jo had been at her house.

They wound up with a group of hunters and psychics working loosely together, using all of their combined skills and contacts to try to find seals. That was the theory, anyway. In practice, Jo spent lots of time as a go-between for various hunters, helping them swap information in the most efficient way. She was willing to wait for it to get off the ground, but she hoped that happened quickly. In the meantime, she found a simple job, just a salt and burn one town over, and handled it herself, doing recon one afternoon and going back to dig up the grave that evening, after Pam was in bed.

In between visits from her neighbors, and friends in town, Pam started seeing clients again, which involved more performance and showmanship than Jo expected. Pam brought out her poofiest broom skirt and her dangliest earrings, and when the first knock on the door came, she took off her glasses and brushed back her hair, letting her bandages show in a way she usually only did at night, while Jo held her tongue and did exactly what Pam told her.

Jo answered the door for the older woman who stood on the porch, and beckoned her silently inside. Mrs. Tournard knew the way to Pam's work table without being led, but Jo pulled her chair out for her anyway. She felt her eyes on her while she lit and arranges Pam's candles, and had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

She played it up as much as Pam did for the next day's customers, wrapping all of her hair up in one of Pam's scarves, wearing elaborate earrings, and answering the door barefoot and in her most beat-up pair of jeans. She smiled at the guy on the porch without quite meeting his eyes, and walked as quietly as she could when she led him into the house. After she left him with Pam, she went into the kitchen and listened to the quiet hum of their voices while having another beer, one of the case she'd bought. She played with the end of the scarf until it was time to take his money and show him the way out.

"It's a hundred," she told Pam, once she was sitting in the guy's chair at the table, and handed her the money. "Five twenties."

Pam shook her head and tucked the bills into her bra. "You must be good for business, girl. His rate's only seventy-five an hour."

"Hey, I can go even more over the top," Jo offered, laughing. "I'm still in all my own clothes. Imagine if I was in your skirts or something."

Pam's answering laughter came a little too late, and she pulled her sunglasses out from a pocket and slid them onto her face.

"Is there anyone else with appointments today?" Jo asked, trying to keep the silence from becoming a full-on awkward moment.

"One more. Should be here at three, whenever that is." She sighed. "They make these talking watches I should probably get, but fuck, I really don't want to. Kill the mystique and all that." She grinned crookedly, like she was faking it.

Jo sort of shrugged. "Is there something else that'd work?"

"Not really. There're some that go by touch that are a little better, but I'm still not a fan." She laughed. "From how Marcela described them, not enough leather for my tastes."

"Probably not," Jo said. She'd been through Pam's jewelry box, after all. There had been plenty of leather there.

.

 

"Okay, I've got something," Pam said one afternoon in October, after she'd come back from lunch with a friend, someone Jo didn't know.

Jo had been up since early morning, forwarding emails around to people in different sides of the country. "Great," she said, surprised. Pam's psychic contacts had been great, so far, at telling them what happened with seals after the fact, but they'd rarely come up with something beforehand. "What is it?"

"It's in Boise, in three days. Mass possession of a church congregation, on the twenty-sixth. We don't know which church yet, but we're trying to narrow it down."

Jo nodded, scribbling down some notes. "How're they going to get people on holy ground?"

Pam shrugged. "I don't think it's going to be on holy ground. Probably it's some church having a picnic or taking a trip, something like that."

"Great, this is – I'm gonna go get this started," Jo said, pushing back from the table. "I'll be in the living room."

"I've got a client at four," Pam called after her.

"Okay," Jo answered. She had a few more hours before she'd need to clear out. She scrolled through her inbox to see if anyone was in the area, but even though Boise was a pretty central location, no one seemed close. She bit her lip and called her mom instead, tapping her pen on the table while the phone rang.

"Hey, honey," Ellen answered. "What's going on?"

"Do you know off the top of your head if anyone's near Boise?"

Her mom hummed. "Not sure," she said after a moment. "I don't think so. Why?"

"Pam says she's got a seal going down there, this Sunday. Mass possession."

Ellen hissed through her teeth. "Okay, lemme check." Jo started Googling churches in Boise while she waited. "No one really close," Ellen finally said. "I think Louis could get there in time, but he's working something else, and he won't want to leave it undone."

Jo sucked at her bottom lip. "Thanks for checking," she said. "I'll talk to you later, okay?"

"Uh uh," Ellen said, before she could hang up. "Tell me you're not thinking about taking this one yourself."

"Someone has to take it," Jo said. "I can get there, and I'm not gonna just let it break because no one else can make it."

"You can't try to stop a mass possession by yourself," Ellen said. "Mass possession – what the hell does that even mean? How big are we talking?"

"Church congregation."

"Dammit, Jo," Ellen said. "You know better than that. That is not a job for one person."

"Well then, what am I supposed to do? I can't just sit here," she repeated.

Ellen sighed. "Boise, right?"

"Boise."

"You're really stuck on doing it?"

"Someone has to," Jo said.

"Alright," said her mom. "I'll come work it with you."

"What?" She laughed a little. "You're kidding, right?"

"I'm not going to let you try to take that on yourself," she said, "which I know is what you'd do, otherwise."

Jo gritted her teeth, but she couldn't really argue. Ellen was right – anything big enough to count as a mass wasn't a one-person job. "Alright," she said, already annoyed. "But only if you're going to let me do my job, and not try to keep me out of things."

"It's my job to keep you out of things," Ellen snapped.

"And it's my job to get into them," Jo said. She rolled her eyes. "I'll email you what we've got," and she hung up.

There turned out to be a hell of a lot of churches in Boise. Jo sighed and eventually started a spreadsheet. Pam came in after she'd been working for about an hour, on her cell phone, and Jo scooted over on the couch to make room for her.

"What are the chances that 'mass' is a play on words?" Jo asked, after Pam got off the phone. "I haven't checked everything yet, but there's a pretty big Catholic church that's taking a bus trip to their annual picnic this Sunday, after Mass."

"Mmm, I dunno," Pam said. "All the source materials for the seals are pretty old. There wouldn't necessarily have been anything called Mass when they were written."

"But there's Mass now," Jo said, and highlighted the church's cells in the spreadsheet just in case. "And the demons I've run across have a bad enough sense of humor to think that's funny."

"I'll double-check before my appointment," Pam said, picking up her phone again. "But don't stop there."

"God, I'm not," Jo said.

Of all the churches she found on yellowpages.com, only about half of them had websites. Jo got on her own phone eventually and started making her way through the others, every time posing as a parishioner who wanted to know what to bring to the weekend's outing. She didn't finish the list until the next afternoon, and she complained to Pam about that while she typed up the email to her mom.

"I can't believe I went through all that work and it turned out to be that fucking church after all," she said, snarling a little at the computer.

"It happens," Pam said, and shrugged. "I'm sorry we couldn't tell you sooner."

Jo rolled her eyes.

"Hey, calm down," Pam said. "It's better to be sure than not, and this way, even if you are wrong, you already have a backup list of the other places it could be."

Jo took a deep breath and exhaled noisily through her nose. It didn't make her feel much better. "I can't believe I'm stuck doing this with my mom, either," she said, unable to really shut up about it. "She's just going to get in my way, I know. She's not going to let me really handle things."

"She's going to be watching your back," Pam said. "And she's going to do a better job of that than any other partner you could have wound up with."

"Yeah, I know, but." Jo ran her hands through her hair. "I don't need someone who's going to be looking out for me, above anything else. I need someone who's going to do the job, and make that their first priority. I don't know how I'm going to work with her if she's not."

Pam shrugged. She'd been perched on the edge of the armchair, but she crossed the room and sat next to Jo, so that their thighs brushed. "You're going to work with her just fine," she said. "She wouldn't take this with you if she thought she was going to get in your way. She's not going to put you at risk like that."

Jo paused in her typing and cocked her head at Pam. "I hadn't thought of it like that."

"Obviously," Pam said. "Now, do you have all that out of your system?" Jo scowled and glanced away, but Pam kept on going. "Because I know you know better than not to. You can't seriously try to go work like that."

"No, I know," Jo said, still frowning. She slumped as she finished off the email, then headed out of the room. She was going to start packing up, but she paused slightly when she passed Pam's door, wondering if she'd need to cut tape for Pam's bandages before she left.

.

She and her mom sat in the back of the church throughout Mass that Sunday and watched the congregation. No one visibly flinched during the service, and no one who got up to take Communion started sizzling, but that didn't mean much. She and her mom didn't go to the rail, either, and they were far from the only people to stay in their seats.

"You see anyone?" her mom asked after the service, as they made their way outside with the rest of the crowd.

Jo shook her head. "Wasn't really expecting to, here."

"Unless they're strong enough that wouldn't stop them," Ellen said, and Jo winced. If holy ground couldn't stop these demons, then Jo sort of doubted she and her mom stood much of a chance.

A priest stood shaking people's hands at each door, and Jo and Ellen split up, each of them talking to a different man. Jo slipped a _Christo_ into her short conversation, and the priest returned it without a problem. She sighed as she met up with her mom again outside, and Ellen shook her head as well.

"Mine, neither," Jo said. "At least not yet."

"Well, that's for the best," Ellen said. "Come on, we need to check out the buses."

Two chartered buses were parked behind the church, but their drivers were nowhere to be seen. Jo snuck inside and sprinkled salt all along the windows, while her mom blessed the gas tanks, hoping it would do something.

The parishioners started filing onto the buses about a half hour after the service ended. Jo saw happy, chattering people everywhere she looked, and she worked hard at faking smiles back.

"I still think we should be on the buses," Jo said to her mom, while they stood in the parking lot near a few other women who hadn't yet boarded.

"If they are making a move on the road, the last thing we need to do is to get caught up in it," her mom answered. "We won't do a bit of good if they get us, too. We'll just be more people for them to use."

"But what if we can stop it?" Jo said, retreading her arguments from the night before. "It's gotta be better for there to be someone on the buses who knows what they're doing."

"There'll be priests on the buses."

"Doesn't mean they'll know what's going on."

"No," Ellen said. "It's still better for us to go on ahead."

She turned and headed towards Jo's truck before Jo could get another word in. The other women in the parking lot, who'd been watching, got onto the bus after a moment. Jo watched them go, biting her lip, then cursed under her breath and followed her mom, unzipping her purse and digging for her keys as she went.

"And this way, you can put jeans on instead of that skirt," her mom said, while Jo unlocked the doors. "Drive fast enough and we'll get there with time to change."

Jo glanced at her, grinning even through her annoyance. "Are you telling me to speed?"

"Buses drive slow," she said, smiling too widely as well, and then turned to look out the window. Jo started the engine, turned up the heat, and they waited for the buses to pull into the street.

Ellen dug the map out of the glove box and told Jo where to turn, and they did make it to the park before the buses, and caravan of cars following behind. Jo shimmied out of her skirt and flats, and into a pair of jeans and her boots, while her mom held her shotgun in her lap, tucked under a scarf. They switched when Jo was done, so Ellen could change as well. The rest of the picnickers where similarly dressed when they arrived – not quite in their church things, but not really casual, either. Neither Jo nor Ellen stood out as they rejoined the crowd, and their bright tote bags blended in as well, even though they were full of weapons.

They blessed as many drinks as they could, Jo going for the punch and Ellen for the cases of bottled water, but Jo could see, even as she did it, that it wasn't going to get to everyone. There were kids with sippy-cups and bottles, teenagers with plastic Starbucks cups, and adults with their own travel mugs. Clearly, not everyone would be drinking this. She sucked at the inside of her cheek and wished that they'd had time to mass-produce anti-possession charms, and to figure out how to pass them out.

"C'mon," her mom said, and nodded to the edge of the group. "Let's do the perimeter."

Jo shook her head, still watching the group of people. A perimeter sweep was hardly going to keep them all safe. "That's not – we should do something else."

"Jo," her mom said, and Jo rolled her eyes before looking at her. "There isn't. We've done about all I can figure to do. Now go on, do the salt. The best thing we can do right now is try to contain this."

Jo scowled and walked off, but she reached into her bag for handfuls of rock salt every few feet as she went around the crowd. She dropped it little by little into the grass, trying not to be obvious. It wouldn't be a secure border, but it might slow the possessed people down, at least.

There were a few other people in the park, some playing with their dogs and some sitting on blankets of their own. Jo tried to make note of them all, and after she dealt with the salt, she approached them one by one.

"Hi," she said, walking up to a couple about her own age, reading under the shade of a tree.

"Hey," the girl said. Her boyfriend, or brother or whatever, peered up as well, and Jo was glad she'd changed out of her skirt.

"I'm with that church over there, and I was just coming to invite you to our scavenger hunt," Jo said. "We do it every year, and it's so much fun. I think you'd really enjoy it."

They glanced at each other, and then the girl shook her head and frowned at Jo. "Maybe we'll come over later, but we're good here right now."

"Sure, that's fine," Jo said. "I just thought I'd mention it, since there's usually a lot of people who look for stuff in this part of the park. We get pretty competitive, and I didn't want to get in your way without at least inviting you first."

They looked at each other again. "How competitive are you talking?"

Jo laughed. "I know it sounds silly, but it's a pretty big deal for us. The harder things are to find, the more they're worth. Like, tree leaves?" She patted them tree's trunk. "Worth more when they're from higher up. A tall tree like this usually gets mobbed."

"That church?" she asked, pointing towards the crowd. "All those people?"

"Yeah, that's us." Jo smiled, trying to overdo it. "But if you change your mind, you can always just get up and play. It's so much fun, I really think you'd love it." She stepped forward and touched the top of each of their heads briefly, and then backed away. "God bless!" she called, and headed to the next family. She glanced over her shoulder and her way and saw the couple packing up, keeping an eye on her, and tried to think of something that would drive away a mom with kids.

It took about thirty minutes to clear out the rest of the families, but in that time, Jo still hadn't seen anything go down. She'd been expecting people to get possessed a few at a time, but none of that happened. She and her mom kept going around the perimeter for another hour or so, one going clockwise and the other counter, but as the wait stretched out, Jo found herself jumping at tiny things, having been too alert for too long. Finally, she stopped Ellen with a hand on her arm and frowned at her.

"What did we miss?" she asked. "I know it was this church, Pam said she had three separate confirmations of that, once they checked out the list I gave them."

Ellen shook her head. "Were they sure it was today?"

"It wasn't the date that matter, it was the lunar cycle." Jo glanced up, even though the moon wasn't visible. "It was definitely today."

"Maybe they just changed their mind." Ellen shrugged. "Demons for this many people is a big effort, and just to break one seal? Smarter to split their forces and do other stuff."

Jo frowned. "That's not a nice thought."

"Sounds right up their alley, then."

"Works for these people here, I guess," Jo said. _Up until the Apocalypse starts off_, she thought, but didn't say that.

They kept watching until the picnic officially ended, but nothing happened. Everyone there walked over the salt without any problem, and got back into the buses and cars, and took off back down the road. Jo and Ellen sat in the truck for a while until everyone else was gone, then walked the field once more for good measure before driving off as well. Jo stayed under the speed limit as they went back to the motel.

Her mom preferred showers in the morning, so Jo got the bathroom first. She washed her hair and tucked it into a bun, then put on her pajamas even though it was only late afternoon. She let her mom use her computer while she napped, and she woke up to her phone ringing on the other pillow.

_Pam Barnes_, the screen said, and she answered immediately. "Hey," she said, "what's up?"

"God," Pam said, sounding unsteady. "I thought – what happened? How'd you make it out?"

"What?" Jo sat up on the edge of the bed and rubbed her face with one hand. Her mom, still at the room's table, looked over. "What are you talking about?"

"The seal," Pam said. "It broke, I thought you were –" She cut herself off and swallowed loudly in Jo's ear. "I didn't think you would have gotten away, from what we knew."

"No," Jo said, frowning. "It didn't break. We were there, but nothing happened. We had salt, we had holy water, we _Christo_ed people, nothing. It didn't happen."

"Turn on the TV," Pam said, after a moment. "It's probably on the news there."

Jo picked up the remote and flicked through a few channels before she found one with the local news. There was a reporter on location somewhere, but the set's volume was turned low, and all Jo could make out was the shot of a smoldering construction site. Across the street, in the back part of the shot, was the church they'd visited that morning.

"What the hell," she said.

"I thought you knew," Pam said. "It was the construction site, for the church's expansion. I thought that's where you were going."

"We went to their picnic," Jo said. The TV showed body bags lines up in the street, all full. "Did you – why didn't you tell me it was this?"

"I just found out!" Pam said. "None of us knew until after it already happened, we –"

Jo threw her phone across the room without ending the call. It thumped into the wall and fell down to the floor, and Jo lay back on the bed, covering her face with her hands.

"What?" Ellen said.

"That." Jo waved one hand at the TV before slapping it down on the bed a few times. "That was the seal, not anything we did. We were at the wrong place entirely."

"Dammit," her mom said, and a moment later, the quiet murmur of the TV shut off.

"Yeah," Jo said. "Hell, why did we even come?" All that gas, everything, we wasted it all. And we didn't get anything done."

"We couldn't have known," Ellen said, after a while. "The picnic was on the site, but not this. You found what you could."

Jo shook her head. "That was supposed to be the whole point of working off Pam's info, though! They were supposed to know. They were supposed to tell us the right place, not – not this."

"You don't know what happened there," Ellen said. When Jo sighed, sitting up to look at her, she was eying Jo, unimpressed. "Could have been the demons caught wind of us and changed plans halfway through."

"That doesn't make any sense," Jo said. "They could have just possessed us, too." She frowned, thinking of their anti-possession charms. "Or had us killed, if that didn't work. Something."

"You'd rather have had that happen?" Her mom stood up and dug in her bag, then carried her own clothes to the bathroom. "You can't try to put logic on a demon. You can start acting like an adult about it, though. Any day now."

Jo scowled, but she picked up her phone as soon as her mom was in the bathroom. The call had ended, probably because Pam hung up on her, and she took a deep breath before carrying the phone to their room's patio. She leaned over the railing and looked across the parking lot for a while. Their room faced the church, but she couldn't see the smoke from here. That was probably a good thing. It couldn't have been that bad if she couldn't see it, hear it, from here.

When she called Pam back, it didn't ring very long before she answered. "Hey," she said, sounding annoyed but mostly just tired.

"Hey, it's Jo."

"Yeah, I know. I gave you a ringtone."

Jo smiled a little at that. "Really?"

"Beats having no idea at all who's calling."

"Makes sense," Jo said. "Look, about earlier, the call got dropped –"

Pam snorted. "The call got thrown, it sounded like."

Shit. Jo flushed. "Uh, okay, yeah, something more like that." She shook her head. "Sorry, I know that was really stupid. I was just – I was so, I'm still so mad about it, and I wasn't thinking right."

Pam hummed but didn't mention it again. "What all do you need to do, before the two of you leave town?"

"Dunno," Jo said. "We'll probably go back by the church, but I doubt there'll be anything useful. It's not like they're going to be hanging around."

"They might be," Pam said.

"Everyone's dead," Jo said. "I saw enough of the footage. I really doubt any of them are still being possessed."

"Well, I think checking it's a good idea anyway." Pam was quiet for a moment. "Okay, I'm actually about to eat, but call me when you're on your way back."

She hung up before Jo could answer. Jo kicked the rail, just for good measure, and stayed on the porch for a while.

.

Jo woke up first, and packed up while her mom was still asleep. She didn't entirely know where she was going – Pam talked as if Jo was obviously coming back to her place, but Jo didn't know about that. She liked working out of a specific location, sort of, but the whole psychic network thing wasn't turning out very well. They'd been at it for a few weeks now, but this was the closest they'd come to stopping a seal.

Jo wanted to be back on the road, getting stuff done. It would be _good_, to get back to regular hunts. She'd wanted that for so much of her life – finding monsters and helping people, having the road under her wheels and under her feet – and she didn't like giving it up. She wanted it back again.

After they checked out, Jo gave her mom a hug and they went their separate ways. Jo got gas on her way out of town and sat at the pump for longer than she should have, thinking things over, but eventually, she pulled out her phone and called Pam. She needed to at least drop by the house again, and make sure she hadn't left anything there.

"Hey," she said, when Pam answered. "I'm on my way. You need me to pick anything up?"

"Nah," Pam said. "I'm good here."

She sped all the way back, and then found another car in the driveway when she got there. She didn't recognize it, but she checked the calendar on her phone and found it was a client-day, for Pam. It made complete sense for Pam to be seeing someone in the afternoon, like usual, but Jo wished she'd thought about that beforehand. There wasn't much point in leaving again, maybe to pick up some food, when the appointment would be done in less than an hour, but she wasn't thrilled to be waiting, either.

She wound up in her truck regardless, waiting it out. The client left about twenty minutes after she arrived. He tried to make small talk, but Jo brushed him off as politely as she could and headed inside.

"Pam?" she called, letting herself in the front door and taking off her coat.

"Hey," she answered, sounding like she was in the kitchen. "You been waiting long?"

"Not too bad." Jo headed into the kitchen, where she found Pam dunking a teabag into a steaming mug. "Maybe half an hour."

"You could have gone around back," Pam said. "Wouldn't have been a big deal."

"It wasn't a big deal," Jo said. She bit her lip for a moment, then poured herself a glass of water. Pam stepped around her to throw her teabag away, and Jo got a glimpse of her face. She had the glasses on, like usual, but the bandages were gone. "No more bandages?"

"Oh, even better." She lifted the glassed up, showing Jo a pair of white, false eyes. Jo laughed a little, surprised, and Pam smiled before dropping the glasses into place. "Marcela brought em by this morning."

"That's cool," Jo said, although she couldn't pretend she wouldn't miss getting to help Pam every night, anymore – the two of them alone in her bathroom, working quietly and efficiently together in a way they hadn't been able to replicate yet, with hunting. She hadn't even thought about giving that up, in her plans to leave, and she frowned, suddenly less certain. "Do you wear them all the time?" she asked, wanting to keep the conversation going.

"They're really weird," Pam said. "I'm not used to them yet. But I'm working with it."

"Well, they look very cool," Jo said. "Very mysterious, if you want to play them up."

"You think I wouldn't?" Pam laughed and went back to her tea.

"Course not." Jo sighed and sipped her water. "Do you think that me being here is the best thing for us to do?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Pam said without hesitating, or thinking about it. "Why, do you?"

Jo shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, I really appreciate you letting me stay here, but I feel like I could be getting more done if I was back on the road. And if you don't need me to help with the bandages anymore…" She trailed off and thought for a moment.

"How much of this has to do with us being wrong about the seal?" Pam asked, sitting back down on one of the bar stools.

"It's not only that," Jo said, trying to get her thoughts in order. "We haven't gotten anything stopped, is all. I want to be getting stuff accomplished, not just staying her and watching it all."

"Is this how you deal with everything that's not working for you?" Pam leaned forward with her hands around her mug and her arms on the counter. "Just leave, instead of try to fix it?"

"What?"

"Things with your mom get hard, you check out to do your own thing. Things here get hard, you want to check out to do your own thing." Pam shrugged. "It's starting to seem like a pattern."

"I'm not checking out," Jo said, biting off the words. "I want to get something done, and, come on, you know that's not happening here."

"If you think you're really going to have a better chance of going at it by yourself, then by all means, you know where the door is." Pam gestured to the front of the house. "If you think that going through newspapers one town at a time and dealing with spirits and shit is going to keep the world from ending, then go. But I can tell better than that – that's not what you actually think. You're just angry and there's nothing you can do about it." She shrugged. "Whatever. Leave."

"That is not what I meant," Jo said. She made herself take a few deep breaths before she went on. "You have to admit that we're not getting anything stopped, though. It's a great idea, and you guys are good at telling us what happened after it already happened, but that doesn't help. If we don't know what's going to happen, we can't stop it." She sighed and took another drink. "It's not like we can run every hunt we come across by you, to see which ones are the most important. Even the jobs that aren't hunts still have to get done."

Pam nodded slowly. "Okay, how about this," she said, after a moment. "You guys can mostly tell when a job is something ordinary, and when it's something big, right?"

"Mostly," Jo said, and shrugged. "But there's a lot of places where the two can overlap."

"Would it work better if you start telling us about all the things that overlap? All the jobs that could go either way, plus all the things you can tell are bigger deals. We can look into more of it that way."

Jo frowned. "Can you handle more of it? I mean, we're talking about a lot of stuff." She thought for a moment. "And if it doesn't work, then we're right back here, with nothing getting done."

"We're not going to get it right if we don't try," Pam said. "Just give it a little longer. This right here is the best thing we have."

Jo finished her glass of water and filled it again. She looked out the window over the sink as she drank it, and then put it down. She couldn't put her finger on why, but part of her did want to stay here, with Pam. "Alright," she said. "A little longer."

.

 

Jo found her next job a few days later. This one was a four-hour drive each way from Pam's house, and this time, Jo didn't worry about where she'd be going, when she was done. Her mom's new place was eight hours further from the town than Pam was, and if Jo was going to give things another shot with Pam, she figured that didn't include leaving the first excuse she got.

She'd packed and was in the kitchen, cutting up snacks, when Pam walked in on the phone, frowning.

"I'm not in a huge rush to work with you guys again," she was saying, her free hand on her hip. "It didn't work out for me so hot last time."

Jo put the knife down and turned around to watch Pam. She leaned against the counter across from Jo, and Jo figured that, if Pam didn't want her to listen, she wouldn't have the conversation in front of her.

"That's flattering," she said a few moments later, "but I'm hardly the only psychic in the area." She listened to whatever they said next, then sighed before answering. "I'll think about it. You're going to owe me for it," she finally said. "I'll call you back."

Jo turned around and finished with the food while Pam finished the conversation. As soon as she put the phone down, Jo rinsed off the knife and asked, "What was that about?"

She huffed a huge sigh. "Job I'm thinking about taking. Some girl out there can here angels talking. No one knows why, and I'm sure the answer is nothing fun."

Jo frowned. "Angels?"

"Angels." Pam laughed, but her top lip pulled up, so she looked more like she was sneering. "Lemme tell you, not nearly as nice as you might think."

"I hardly think anything's nice unless it's given me a reason to in person, these days," Jo said.

"Probably a good policy."

Jo picked up her food – grapes in one baggie and homemade trail mix in another. "Are you going to take it?"

"Maybe." Pam shrugged and crossed her arms. "They weren't just blowing smoke up my ass. I am the best person to do it."

Jo noticed how she was talking around names, or even specific pronouns, and she sighed. "Sounds like they know who to go to, at least."

"You heading out?"

"Yeah," Jo said. She went to the guest room and rolled up her jeans to put on a thick pair of socks, and then her boots. Pam followed her and stood in the doorway. "You need me to do anything first?"

"Everything's where it's supposed to be, right?"

"Yeah." It all was. Jo had learned to keep things put exactly away.

"Then no," Pam said. Jo watched her for a moment, then gathered her stuff together and shouldered her bag. Pam stepped out of her way and walked in front of Jo, leading to the door.

"Got your snacks?" she asked once they were there, standing with her hand on the doorknob.

Jo patted the bags so that the plastic crinkled. "Okay, I'm heading out."

"Call me sometime," she said. "When you get there or something. I wanna know."

"Yeah," Jo said, and left.

.

She was going after a slew of deaths at a community college district. There were six campuses in the area it served, and there had been eight deaths, on one campus or another, over the past three years. One kid dead on each campus, actually, with an extra death at each of the locations closest to downtown. Pam couldn't tell her, one way or another, if it had to do with a seal, but it had been going on for long enough that Jo doubted it. And either way, it had to be done.

Jo checked into a motel first, a mom and pop place a few miles into town, and then headed off to do her on-the-ground research. She already knew that seven of the deaths were written off as suicides, and so weren't being investigated by local law enforcement, but there were too many coincidences for that to be true. The killings alternated between male and female each time, and always left behind a slew of survivors who swore it couldn't be true, that it had come out of nowhere. Each one was found in their campus's student center, the Monday after a three-day weekend, and they all had the exact same marks on their body. Jo didn't buy them as suicides at all.

She took a few pamphlets on grief with her to the nearest campus, hoping to talk herself into the registrar's office, and called Pam on the way.

"Hey," she said, when Pam answered. "I'm here."

"Was there traffic?" Pam asked. "I'd figured you were going to get there sooner."

"Nah, I got settled at the motel first. I'm on my way to the school now."

"Oh," Pam said. There was a pause. "Is it looking like it'll be an okay job?"

"Can't tell yet," Jo said. "It could still go either way."

"Yeah," Pam said. "Hey, if you do wind up getting back soon, I might not be there."

"You're doing the job?"

"Yeah, decided to take it." She hummed. "They were right. I am the best person for it."

She still didn't elaborate, and Jo shrugged. "I'll talk to you later, then."

"Yeah," Pam said. "Good luck."

"You, too," Jo said, and then the phone was quiet against her ear. She put it in her purse and kept on driving.

Once she scammed her way into the system, it took less than an hour for Jo to figure out all the victims were taking online classes the semester they died. It took some digging after that, but she was able to pin the system administrator as a crocotta, although one that fed cyclically. She figured it was the perfect candidate for a job that involved computers, and maybe being a little obsessive about one's office.

She went back to the room for a few hours to let campus empty out for the evening, but when she returned, with a paste of garlic, salt, and holy water, as well as a silver knife, in her purse, she found out the guy usually telecommuted, and was hardly ever on campus. She tried to remind herself that it had just fed, and that she wouldn't be putting anyone at risk by waiting another day to take it out, but she was still impatient.

Jo bought a sandwich at the sub shop across from her motel and updated her notes on crocottas while she ate, picking at the food. She'd gotten used to talking to Pam over dinner and she sort of wanted to call her, but she also didn't want to get in the way of her job. They didn't have any sort of system set up for that, like she did with her mom, and it wasn't like Jo could text her, to see if it was a good time. With the phone she still had, someone would have to read it to her, and that defeated the point.

Jo picked up her phone anyway, scrolled down to her mom's number, and dialed.

"Jo," Ellen said when she answered, sounding surprised more than anything else. "Everything okay, baby?"

"Yeah, everything's fine," Jo said. "I just wanted to check in."

"Oh," said her mom. Jo could hear her smiling. "Are you working right now?"

"Yeah, I'm in Missouri, going after a crocotta." Jo wound up telling her mom everything she'd found, and all her theories, even though she'd only meant to talk about the basics.

"You should take a stake with you, too," her mom said, when Jo finished. Honestly, she was surprised Ellen hadn't launched immediately into a lecture on why Jo should let someone else do the job. "Things like that, a lot of the time a stake'll kill em when nothing else will."

"Okay," Jo said, nodding. "What kind of wood?"

Ellen hummed. "I'll look it up for you. If there's something growing all over the place there, though, it can't hurt to start with some of it."

"Yeah, I'll look." Jo pulled the phone away from her face for a moment to check the time. "Okay, I need to get in bed now, Mom."

"Sure thing," her mom said. "You be careful tomorrow. Call me when you're done."

"Yeah, I will."

"Love you," Ellen said.

"You, too," Jo answered, and then hung up. She smiled at her phone for a moment – that went so much better than she expected – then put it down and turned out the lights.

.

 

Her mom's hunch, plus the oak branch Jo carved down on her advice, didn't get a chance to prove themselves. She found the admin's house the next morning, pretended to read on a bench across the street until the neighbors cleared out, then broke in and killed it with the knife, while it slept on the couch. It fought, scratching her cheek, and it got sticky purple blood all over its living room set, but when she left, late in the afternoon, things were taken care of.

She called Pam when she was back in her motel room, after she showered. It went to voicemail, and Jo left a short message before texting her mom. She'd missed checkout and was paying for the next night anyway, so Jo ordered the chef's special from the first Chinese food place she found in the phone book. She ate in one bed, then slept in the other.

She made it to Pam's house the next morning. Pam wasn't back yet. Jo didn't have a key, but she had Pam's permission to go through one of the windows, so she let herself into the backyard, and then, through a window, into the house. She unpacked again and sat alone in the living room for a while, poking through her email with the house dim and quiet around her. She turned the TV on for company after a while, but couldn't find anything worth watching, and turned it off again.

She dozed off. She didn't mean to, but she did anyway, and she woke up to an engine revving, out in the driveway. She could hear a key turning in the front door, and Jo scrambled up. She got there just in time to pull the door open, revealing Pam on the porch and a sleek black car, disappearing down the block.

Jo knew what car that was, and even though she only caught a glimpse of the man behind the wheel, she knew who that was, too.

"Jo," Pam said, and grinned, coming inside. Jo let her in, but she still held onto the door with one hand. "Sorry I didn't call you back. There wasn't really a good time to talk."

Jo stared down the street for a moment, then followed her inside. Pam stopped just inside the living room with her bag at her feet, and Jo paused for a moment. "That was Dean Winchester," she said eventually.

"It was indeed." Pam carried her bag into her room and put it on her bed, and Jo followed, standing by the door as Pam started pulling clothes out.

She bit her lip. She'd recognized her thing for Dean as a lost cause a long time ago, but that hadn't made the attraction go away. It had been hard to give him up as a bad idea, and harder still to give him up for dead. She'd ignored the rumors about Sam as fishy stories, and she'd ignored the rumors about Dean, too. They couldn't have been true, not matter how many times she heard them. People didn't come back from the dead, and when they did, Jo knew well enough to stay away.

"You didn't tell me you were working with them," she said.

Pam raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know it was a problem. It's not like you ran the names of anyone you worked with by me, just now."

"But I didn't know that you knew any of them," she said. "And you knew that I knew Dean."

"Did I?" Pam asked. She sat on the edge of the bed, facing Jo. There was room next to her, if Jo wanted to come and sit, but she didn't. She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall instead. She felt childish enough even having this conversation, and she wanted at least the physical high ground. "Because neither of you ever mentioned the other, in more than passing. Sam either. If you were close, I didn't know it."

Jo sucked at the inside of her cheek. "We worked together a few times," she said eventually. That skirted the issue, most of the issues, but she figured she could tell Pam all of that later. Hell, Pam was psychic, and she was smart, on top. Maybe she'd figured it out already. "I thought he was still dead."

Pam's face softened. "Not for a couple months now."

"You'd known all this time?" Jo asked, and Pam nodded. "How'd you – did you see him?"

Pam laughed unpleasantly. "One of the last things I did see." She tapped her glasses. "I was working with him and his brother, and Bobby Singer, when this happened."

"Shit," Jo said. All the dregs of confusion went out of her, and she sat next to Pam after all. She'd only been in Pam's room before to help her with her bandages, and she'd never sat on her bed before. It made her shiver before she went on. "What happened?"

"Going after an angel," she said. "Not that I knew it beforehand. Turns out the son of the bitch was the one who yanked Dean out of Hell, but he also burned the eyes out of me for getting too close. I'm keeping my distance for now."

"Don't blame you," Jo said.

Pam shrugged. "Yeah, well."

Jo watched her. A good part of the excitement she thought she'd felt over seeing Dean was still here, and she realized after a moment that it was actually over _Pam_ — having Pam back again, close enough to wrap up in her arms, if she wanted. Jo frowned and glanced at the floor, and then back again, unsure of what to make of the reaction.

Eventually, giving herself something else to think about, she said, "I'm guessing this job went better."

"Crappy standard there," Pam answered, smiling. "Yeah, it was okay."

Jo was curious, but Pam still didn't go into more details than that, and Jo didn't want to outright ask. Pam was big on confidentiality, as far as Jo could tell. She'd always waited until Jo was out of the room before starting with a client, and she never got into specifics about any of her other jobs, either.

"Is he okay?" She still couldn't keep from asking. "Sam, too?"

Pam shrugged. "Not really. As okay as I think they're gonna get, but you know." She scooped up a handful of clothes and headed into the closet. "I don't think either of them can be okay, at this point."

Four months in Hell. Jo shuddered and stood, too, trying to put it out of her mind. She carried Pam's bag with her to the closet. "I brought your bag," she said, and held it out.

"Thanks," Pam said, and took it. "How'd things go for you?"

Jo leaned against the doorjamb and told her.

.

"Raining blood," Pam said a few days later, shaking her head and pursing her lips at the new omen Jo told her about. "You're sure?"

"I haven't seen it myself," Jo said. "Obviously. But what I've read is pretty convincing."

"I bet," Pam said. "You think it's related to a seal?"

"Yeah," Jo said. "I hate to say it, but I almost hope it is. If things are bad enough that it's raining blood just because, then we're worse off than I thought."

Pam laughed without smiling, then cocked her head to the side. "I think I'm the only one who can work this today. Everyone else I'm in touch with has other stuff they're working on." She paused for a moment. "Does it need to be today?"

"You know." Jo shrugged. "Probably not right this second, but the sooner we know, the better.

Pam nodded. "This is not going to be fun," she said. "But sure. Let's get started."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, this is bigger game than we've had so far. It's gonna be hard to dig at, by myself."

Jo frowned. "How hard?"

Pam bit her lip, then let it go. "It's — it's tricky," she said. "And it's hard, and it doesn't always work. But, probably I can manage."

"Probably?"

"Definitely," Pam said. "Definitely."

"Okay," Jo said after a moment. "I mean, do you want to? Because, shit, what do you need, tell me and I'll go get it."

Pam smiled, a little unsteadily around the edges, but pushed her chair back from the table and stood. "C'mon," she said. "I'll tell you what."

Jo shivered a little as she followed Pam into her office. Pam sat on the couch and folded her hands in her lap, then nodded to a closet across the room.

"In there," she said, and Jo crossed to pull the door open. Inside, the shelves were full of a variety of cloth-covered containers, the decorative kind Jo had seen in plenty of people's living rooms. "About eye-level, there's a flowery box. It's got candles in it, a few bags. Bring it over here."

Almost everything was covered in one obnoxious floral print or another, but Jo pulled out a box at the shelf closest to Pam's eye-level — it was a little too high for her — and looked inside. It only held a slew of opened envelopes, so she checked the other. This one had much more than what Pam said she was looking for - Mason jars full of dried plants, and silver utensils, including a knife and a tarnished goblet, and several decks of cards, some still sealed up in cellophane and others looking old and tattered — but it did have a few wide pillar candles, unburnt, and several black bags, one each in cotton, velvet, and silk. Jo closed the door after her and carried the box over to Pam.

"Here," she said, and handed over the container when Pam reached out for it. "Is this the right one?"

She settled it in her lap, perched atop her knees, and put her hands inside, feeling the various items. "Yeah," she said, once she closed her fingers around the goblet. "Good." She stood up and carried the box to the table where she took her appointments. She put it down in her chair, then pulled the white tablecloth off the table and folded it. "There's a black one there behind you," she said. "Spread it out. Make sure the edges hang evenly."

Jo found it on one of the shelves where Pam kept her day to day equipment. It smelled of smoke when she let it billow out over the table, and she walked all the way around it to make sure it hung the way Pam wanted.

"Alright," she said, when she finished. "It is."

Pam put the box on the table and sat without checking Jo's work, and Jo felt a tiny flush of pride at Pam's confidence in her.

"I'm gonna be doing a variation of a ritual I usually use for stuff like this," she said, taking the candles and arranging them in a triangle in front of herself, one close to the center of the table, and the other two towards her sides. She picked up the bags next and put one in front of each candle, laying them on their sides with the bottom of the bag towards the candle and the top facing her. She kept them closed, and the cotton one went in the center, with silk to the left and velvet to the right.

"It's fiddlier," Pam continued, "and it'll take longer, but it's a little safer." She held up one of the Mason jars. "Is this petals or leaves?"

It was full of dusty pink flecks. "Petals," Jo said.

Pam nodded and opened it, sprinkling a handful of petals in the center of the triangle. She put the knife in the middle of the pile with its handle pointing at her chest, and added stems from one of the other jars. Jo, still standing on the far side of the table, shifted her feet.

"I have to do it alone, though," Pam said. "You can help me set up, and I'm gonna need you to light the candles, but you leave right after that. You don't come back until I call for you. And after I start, you don't say anything, okay?"

"Got it," Jo said. She stayed in place as Pam arranged the goblet as well, and weighed a few of the card decks in her hands before putting two, one old and one new, in front of her.

"Alright, we're almost there," Pam said. She held the box out to the side, and Jo walked around the table to take it from her. "You can put the old tablecloth in there if you want." Jo did. "Stick it in the office when you leave, on the couch."

"Okay."

"Do you have matches?"

"A lighter," Jo said, tucking the box under her arm to find it. It was in her back pocket, just like it should be, but she didn't pull it out yet.

"No, it needs matches," Pam said. "There are some in the kitchen, in the cabinet above the stove. Go get a box."

Jo padded off to find it. The house wasn't any quieter than usual, but she still tried not to make noise when she went.

"Leave the box there, actually," Pam called, so Jo did. She stood high on her toes to get the matches down, and opened the box to make sure it was full before taking it back to Pam.

"You hold onto it," Pam said. "Now, when you light the candles, you need to do them all three of one match, so move fast, but not so fast you put it out. Once they're lit, the match goes here —" she touched one finger to the center of the arrangement — "and then you leave. Go out the front door, and shut it behind you. Are you wearing shoes? Do you have your coat?"

"They're by the door."

Pam nodded. "It'll take me an hour, maybe a little more. I'll come get you when you can come back in, but don't come in before that."

Jo hummed, then hesitated. "You're going to be okay by yourself, right?"

"If the house catches fire, come get me, but yeah, I should be fine." Her voice was steady but her forehead was wrinkled, and the corners of her mouth were tight. Jo hesitated a moment longer, then remembered how she felt every time someone underestimated her, and let it go.

"Alright," Jo said, taking out a match. "When do you want me to do it?"

"Whenever you're ready," she said. "I'm good."

Jo licked her lips, then lit the match. It hissed and flared, then settled. Jo moved quickly between the candles, lighting them as fast as she could, and then shook out the match. She put it where Pam showed her, then glanced at Pam. She was straight-backed in the chair, with her hands folded on the table before her. Her head was cocked to the side, and Jo slid the matches into her pocket, alongside her Zippo, as she turned and left.

She was on the front porch, with the door shut behind her, when she realized she'd left her wallet and keys inside. She thought for a moment, then went to the backyard, sat on the bench, and waited for Pam to finish.

.

It was almost three hours, definitely long enough that Jo started pacing around the porch to keep warm, before Pam opened the door and let her in again. She turned around and headed to the living room without waiting to close the door behind Jo, and Jo frowned and hurried after her. The living room smelled strangely floral, and when Jo passed the table, the dried flowers were gone but the goblet was full of ashes. The candles had all been blown out, and Jo didn't study it any further as she followed Pam to the couch.

She sank down unsteadily, holding onto the arm as she went, and Jo knelt down in front of her, putting one hand on one of Pam's knees.

"Are you alright?" she asked. This close, she could see sweat beaded around Pam's temples.

"Just tired," Pam said, and sighed. "Do you think you could clean that stuff up?"

It was almost weird to be asked, when Jo was used to just doing what Pam told her. "Of course," she said, and crossed to the table. "Do I need to do anything special to any of it?"

"Throw out the candles. The cards go back into their boxes. Knife and cup in the kitchen, I'll get them later, and just ball up the tablecloth."

Jo did it, noticing as she worked that the knife's blade was bloody. She just put it on the counter, next to the goblet, and filled a glass of water before going back to the living room. Pam was exactly where she'd left her, and when Jo said, "I brought you some water," she held out her hands for it quickly, then downed it.

"Sorry," she said. "I'm just beat, after that."

"Did it work?" Jo asked.

Pam finished the glass and grinned. "Oh yeah. It was some fucking coven out of Boston. The blood was part of one seal, it's already broken, but they've got plans for next month, too. I'll give you the info here in a —" She yawned, breaking off.

"Tell me tomorrow, if we've got a while," Jo said. She put the empty glass on the floor. "C'mon, you need something to eat." Pam nodded, and Jo stood. "Uh, you stay here. Lie down, maybe. Is there something you want?"

"Soup?"

Jo didn't think there _was_ soup in the fridge, but there probably was a can of some something in the pantry. She checked, and they wound up having leftover fajita filling, chopped up further and stirred into a can of chicken broth. It wasn't the best meal Jo had ever eaten, but it was pretty high on the list of things she'd made, and it was even better when Jo stirred a spoonful of salsa into hers.

She served Pam's in an oversized mug, and they ate on the couch. Pam kept both hands wrapped around the cup, and she blew on it to cool it down before she drank. Afterwards, Jo left the dishes on the coffee table, and the pot on the stove, and steered Pam into her room, keeping an arm around her waist as they went. Pam didn't lean all her weight on Jo, but she didn't pull away, either.

"God, just point me towards by bed," Pam said, once they got into her room. Jo led her to it and Pam leaned against the mattress as she toed out of her shoes.

"Do you need — are you showering tonight?" Jo asked.

She sighed. "I'll feel better in the morning if I do, but right now I just want to crash." She shook her head. "Nah, I'm just not. I'll do it when I get up."

"Okay."

Pam folded her sunglasses and leaned to put them on her bedside table. She paused for a moment, long enough that Jo didn't move, either, and then sighed and shrugged. "Can you — god, this is really stupid, but can you help me get undressed?" She was blushing, and Jo felt her cheeks fill up with blood as well. "I just, I think I'll fall over right now if I try to do it by myself, and I don't wanna sleep in my jeans, you know?"

"Yeah," Jo said after a moment. She swallowed hard. "We can do that."

Pam nodded and unbuttoned her jeans. Jo looked away, at the wall behind Pam's shoulder, then felt stupid and glanced back at Pam's face. She'd been asked to be here. This wasn't taking advantage. Pam unzipped her pants and pushed them down with a playful shimmy, and she smirked at Jo.

"Ha ha," Jo said, rolling her eyes, and Pam amped it up, tucking her thumbs into her waistband and slowly pushing her pants down her thighs. "If you can manage this, I'd think you can manage the rest."

Pam huffed and leaned back against the bed as she kicked all the way out of her jeans. "You're no fun." She pulled her tank off without playing around and Jo swallowed. It was stupid, she'd been around women in their underwear before, but she felt different now, here with Pam. She knew she shouldn't, that it would be crossing a line, but she _wanted_ to look. She wanted to know what Pam's body was like, to see her in more than just glimpses.

Pam's underwear was black, unsurprisingly, and she had a tattoo on her right hip, roses, into addition to the one Jo already knew about. She didn't cross her arms or try to cover herself up further, just held her shirt out for Jo to take. "Could you stick those in the closet for me?" she asked, getting all the way off the bed and walking towards the headboard. "I'll trip on them otherwise."

Jo carried them to the laundry basket, and when she came back into the room, Pam was under the covers. Jo couldn't tell if she'd taken her bra off or not, and she tried to remind herself that it was none of her fucking business.

"You need anything else?" Jo asked.

Pam shook her head. "Just to sleep for about fourteen hours."

"I'll see you tomorrow, then," Jo said, and took one more glance at Pam before leaving.

.

Pam was up earlier than Jo expected the next morning, around nine. She came out of her bedroom wearing her robe, with her hair in a ponytail, and Jo stood up from where she'd been working on the couch.

"Hey," she said. "You want something to eat?" Jo asked. "There's still coffee, and I fucked up on the measurements on the oatmeal, so there's more of that, if you want any."

"You can't handle oatmeal?"

"I'm used to instant," Jo protested.

"That's not exactly a ringing endorsement," Pam said, but then she shrugged. "Okay, just so you're not wasting it."

She poured coffee and then sat while Jo added more milk to the oatmeal and heated it up again.

"You want anything in this?" Jo asked.

"What'd you put in yours?"

"Cinnamon and ginger."

Pam nodded. "Sounds good."

"So, tell me about this coven," Jo said, once Pam finished eating and was sipping her coffee.

She smiled and shook her head. "One-track mind. Alright, what did I say last night? I don't remember all of it."

"You said they were on the East coast, and planning something else, but that was really it."

"Mmm, okay." She laced her fingers together and stretched her arms out in front of her. "They're in Boston, maybe the suburbs, and it's mostly college kids, with a leader in his late 30s. Sort of like a cult, where he's using them to do all the really nasty stuff, but he gets most of the benefits."

Jo raised her eyebrows. "There are benefits?"

"Well, he thinks so. Sort of like making a regular deal with a demon, I think, because you don't get something from demons without it coming out of your ass eventually."

"You get a name on him?"

"Daniel Pearson," Pam said. "Couldn't really get anything else specific, but you can find him with that, right?"

"Yeah," Jo said. "Having his name is good."

Pam smiled. "They're trying to break another one, too. This one'll have to take place at the full moon, though, so we've got until then."

"What is the next one?"

Pam shook her head. "I couldn't tell, not really. He wasn't thinking about it that way, morel like a list of stuff he had to do in order to break it. Animal sacrifice, either a cat or a goat, it wasn't clear, and some ritual chanting, some sex with a virgin..." She trailed off and shook her head. "I don't know, that's all I could get clearly."

Jo chewed on her bottom lip. "That's the whole ritual?"

"I doubt it. But it could be."

"That could be almost anything, then," Jo said. "And it still doesn't tell us the specific seal."

Pam just nodded, and they sat there quietly for a while.

"But you know, whatever," Jo said eventually. "If we've got the guy's name, we can just stop them, and then the seal itself doesn't matter."

"Unless he's in contact with some other group, who'll just do it for them," Pam said. She picked up her mug again and slurped down the rest of her coffee. "Kind of an uphill battle, you know?"

Jo shrugged. "We know about this one now," she said. "We can do something about it."

"C'mon," Pam said, standing and picking up her bowl. "Come dry these for me."

They did the dishes and tidied up the kitchen a little more, and then Pam opened the fridge, grabbed a handful of beers, and nodded towards the back door.

"You know," Jo said, after her first deep sip, "my mom always said it was a bad sign when people drank before noon."

Pam snorted and took another pull of her own bottle. "Yeah, well, at least we're not drinking alone."

Jo laughed. She could hear one of Pam's neighbors mowing their grass, but otherwise it was quiet.

"You ever wanted to get into some other line of work?" Pam asked, after a few moments. She had her face tilted up to the sun. Jo studied her for a moment before answering.

"No," she said, and shrugged. "This has always been it."

"Really?" Pam turned towards her for a moment, and then went back. "I mean, with my particular skill set, this is the best think I can do with myself, but it sucks, sometimes. I wouldn't pick it if I wasn't stuck with it, you know?"

"Really?" Jo tried to imagine what she'd do if she'd grown up in a different bar, if her dad had died a different way and held a different job before he did, but she couldn't. "I wouldn't want anything else. I love it."

Pam shrugged and drank again. "I could do without the knowledge that the world's ending and I can't do shit about it."

Jo couldn't argue with that. She finished her beer and put the empty on the porch, then opened her second. In the middle of the day, it was still warm enough to sit outside and drink, since they both had plenty of layers on. "My dad hunted," she said, and took a drink. Pam turned towards her again. Jo shrugged and kept going. "So when I was little, it was this thing I was looking forward to, you know? And then after he died, and my mom tried to get us out, it was something to do in his memory." She laughed. "Plus, to piss her off." Pam laughed too, and she shrugged. "It's always been there, ever since he was."

"I'm sorry," Pam said, after a while.

"Thanks," Jo said, a little uncomfortable. "It was a long time ago."

Pam shook her head. "That's something else I could do without. Seems like people only get into this because they lost someone, and usually in some horrible way." She drank again. "No, I can do without that part, too."

"Everybody loses people," Jo said. "It's not like it's just hunting where that happens."

"No, but it's hunting where it's worse," she said. "Nastier ways to die, and no way to lie to yourself about what happens after someone dies, and then the people left behind just obsess and obsess..."

Jo shrugged, pretty sure she was one of those obsessive survivors Pam was talking about. "What about you?" she asked, instead. "The fortune-telling business come with a high death rate, too?"

"High enough." She took a long drink and rolled her bottle between her palms before going on. "I had this partner, when I first started out. He was almost forty, and I was —" She cocked her head. "About your age, I guess. I'd finished school and I'd been traveling for a while, and then I met him in this bar." She laughed. "It sounds so sketchy now, but it was a good set-up, really. I didn't know anything about making this into a business, and he taught me all that. Taught me other stuff, too — tarot, tea leaves, a little scrying. Stuff I never would have looked into on my own, anyway." She shrugged. "And, you know, I was living outta his guest room, and working with him all day, and I had some serious hero worship going, so." She laughed. "A year later, we were actually living together, not just in the same house, and it was really good." She turned her face down, towards her lap. "Best time of my life, felt like."

The silence stretched out until Jo licked her lips and said, "Until?"

Pam shook her head. "Until he tried to go into trance for one of our regulars, and gave himself a stroke instead," she said. "Massive internal bleeding, lots of pressure on his brain, the works. They cut a hole in his skull but he still died. Less than twenty-four hours." She pressed her lips together. "And we weren't married or anything, I don't think he was even using his real name, so they wouldn't let me in to see him —" She cut off and shook her head. "Yeah, pretty decent death rate here, too."

Jo thought about Rick disappearing on his last job, thought about not even knowing what had happened to him. She didn't imagine that knowing would have made it much better. "I'm sorry," she said, and Pam kind of nodded, kind of shrugged.

"Yeah, you know," she said.

"Was that Jesse?" Jo asked, after a while.

Pam barked out a laugh. "Nah, Jesse was the rebound. He was in some band, didn't know about the business at all. Sometimes I think that's the way to go, you know? Things are easier when the biggest risk to the relationship is groupies."

Anyone could have a stroke, Jo thought, but she kept it to herself. "No lying about things when the other person already knows, though," she pointed out. "And you know exactly why they're not in touch, or why they're out of town all the time. I think it's better that way."

"Seriously?" Pam drained her beer and opened another, popping the lid off with one of her rings. "You speaking from experience there?"

"Sort of," Jo said, and then laughed a little. "I think it plays into your other theory, though."

"What, the painful death theory, or the don't shit where you eat theory?" Pam asked.

"Little of both," Jo said.

"Ah," said Pam, quieter. "What was their name?"

"Rick," Jo said, and closed her eyes for a moment. "His name was Rick."

Pam nodded. "How long?"

"About ten months with him, two years since."

"That sucks," Pam said after a moment.

Jo laughed, glad to be done apologizing to each other for shit that was out of their control. "Tell me about it."

"God, we're a barrel of laughs today," Pam said. "Is it lunchtime yet? I want something unhealthy to go with all of this."

Jo checked her watch. It wasn't quiet noon yet, but it would be by the time their food got here, if they ordered now. "Have we had too much pizza recently?"

"No such thing," Pam said, and stood. "I'm getting a supreme. You want some real pasta to go with it?"

"Lasagne," Jo said. "Bread, too."

"Yeah, yeah," Pam said, and disappeared inside. She opened the door a few minutes later but didn't come back outside. "I'm gonna shower while it comes. Can you get the door if I'm not out yet?"

"Yeah," Jo said. "I'm finishing your beer, in that case."

"Hell, I shouldn't have had it in the first place," Pam said. "Don't get too sloshed, though. I want to keep going after this."

Jo shivered as she took her first sip out of Pam's bottle, putting her mouth where Pam's lips had been. "Yeah," she said. "I'll be careful."

.

 

Jo got an email from her mom the next day.

> **From:** e.harvelle@gmail.com  
> **To:** enihpesoj91@gmail.com  
> **Sent:** November 23, 2008  
> **Subject:** [no subject]
> 
> Have Pam check on a seal about to break in Monroe City, either tonight or tomorrow. Just got word, and you're the closest person we've got. If it's tomorrow, Lucy might be able to get there in time to help. She's hauling ass to get to you either way.
> 
> It's ritual grave desecration. They're going after the bodies of all the 1st-born sons buried within city limits. All you have to do is make sure they don't get _all_ of them. I'd think you should pick one cemetery and just guard it, but you'll have to see once you get there.
> 
> Call me when you're done. Love you.

She'd attached a few files, which turned out to be scans of the relevant religious texts, and a map of the town with the graveyards highlighted. Jo sent her mom an answer after Pam said it was a go -- _On it_ \-- and then started to pack up.

She told the route she'd probably take while she pulled her boots on, with her bag already by the door and her keys in her pocket. Pam nodded, leaning against the back of the couch with her arms crossed in front of her chest.

"Call when you're on your way back," she said, "and c'mere."

She wrapped Jo up in a hug, and when Jo pulled back, Pam kept her hands on Jo's hips. Jo blinked at her, wishing she could see all of Pam's expression, and then Pam smiled and let her go. "Be careful," she said. "Get it done, but come on back."

"Yeah," Jo said, and wondered why it felt so automatic for her to be going back to Pam's. It did, though, and she could still feel Pam's hands on her hips when she was an hour down the road.

Jo got into town an hour before sunset. She pulled to the side of the road and flipped through the maps, trying to guess what her best plan of attack here was. Maybe a smaller cemetery, one of the old ones on the edges of town, would be best – less territory to defend, and probably, fewer people would be coming to take it out. On the other hand, she'd be more noticeable in a smaller place, and she couldn't just find a grave in the back and hope they didn't get around to it.

A bigger cemetery would give her more space to work with, and she might luck into desecrators who didn't search out every single first-born son. Of course, she'd be looking at bigger teams coming to do the work, and those odds didn't stack up very well against just one person.

Jo rubbed at her forehead, then pulled out her phone and called Lucy.

"Hey, Harvelle," she said when she answered. "I hear we've got a date tonight."

"Yeah, and you'd better not stand me up," Jo said. "You think you're gonna make it in time?"

"I hope so," Lucy said. "I'm hauling ass as much as I can, but my radar detector's busted, and the last thing I need is to get pulled over."

Jo laughed. "You ever get those tickets in Vermont taken care of?"

"That's what I'm worried about," Lucy said.

"Well, I'm already in town, so you can calm down a little," Jo said. "I still need you out here as soon as you can make it, though."

"Yeah," Lucy said. "You have any idea how you want to go about this?"

Jo ran through her thoughts on which size cemetery to pick, and Lucy hummed when she finished.

"I see your point," she said. "You have a preference, either way?"

"I can't decide," Jo said. "I almost want to pick bigger, but I can't put my finger on why."

"Go with it," Lucy said. "We'll have more room to maneuver, and they'll have to spend longer there, so we can keep a good eye on them. It'll work."

"Sure hope so," Jo said. She glanced over the map again, then picked the town's biggest cemetery and read its address to Lucy. "Can you find it with your phone?"

"Yeah," she said. "I'll text you when I'm coming in to town. I should be there in three hours, at the most."

"Yeah," Jo said, and closed her eyes for a moment.

"You need me to bring anything? What all do you have?"

"Two sawed-offs, three knives, a Beretta. I don't have enough ammo for us to shoot at each other all night, but hopefully it won't come down to that."

"I'll bring what I've got," Lucy said. "Are these all people we're dealing with, or are any of them going to be possessed?"

"No clue," Jo said. "Shit, I hadn't even thought of that."

"Yeah, it's happy fun times, isn't it."

Jo laughed. "Okay, I'm going to get going. I'll text you the name when I'm settled down somewhere, and I'll see if I can find you a back way in. I might not be able to, though."

"We'll figure it out," Lucy said. "I'll see you in a few."

Visiting hours technically ended at sundown, so rather than go in for a few minutes and then get kicked out, Jo drove around the block a few times. There were entrances on the north and south sides of the grounds, plus a service gate on the east end. She called Lucy and told her about that, figuring it was their best way in, and then went looking for a place to park.

She had to rearrange the gear in her tote bag a little, to bring stuff she could use against demons as well as people, but everything still fit, when she was done. She watched the service gate for another hour, until a few cars drove out. The drivers waved to each other as they went different ways down the street, and Jo waited a little longer, until one more guy drove out. He stopped his car just outside the gate, so he was still in the driveway but no longer in the cemetery proper, and got out and locked it before leaving. Jo guessed he was management, and once he was out of sight, she hooked her bag across her chest and got out of her truck, heading inside.

She'd been in graveyards at night before, and while they weren't fun places, she'd lost most of her initial fear at being in one, alone, knowing something was going to come down on her. Even if some of the desecrators were possessed – even if all of them were – Jo knew what they were after, and why they were doing it, and their timeframe. This was much more information than she usually had, going into a job.

Jo put her phone on silent when she took it out of her pocket, then called her mom.

"Go," Ellen said.

"I'm at the Glenwood Cemetery," she said. "I need you to find me a grave to stake out. Try to get it on the west side, there's no entrance over there."

"Alright, I'm working on it," Ellen said. "But their online directory isn't very specific. The most it'll tell me is names and the general area of the grave, not a particular plot number."

"Okay, well, just give me as close as you can get." Jo tried to keep an eye around her while she walked to the west side. There was a decorative pond in the center of the cemetery, with a fountain in the center, and she grinned as she headed over. "Hold on a sec," she said, and held the phone between her shoulder and her face as she pulled her rosary beads out of her bag and blessed the water.

"You expecting demons?" her mom asked, with her voice tight.

"We're not sure," Jo said, once she finished and got on her way again. "But it can't hurt to be ready, in case they come."

"Alright, I have a few names for you," her mom said a little later. "You got something to write on?"

Jo looked around her again, really uncomfortable with the idea of stopping to take notes. She'd be busy, and not able to pay attention to her surroundings at all, at least for a few moments. And a few moments was plenty of time for someone to get the drop on her. There wasn't really a way around it, though: she needed the information, and she didn't want to wait the minute or two it would take for Ellen to hang up and text it to her.

"Yeah," she said, finding a pen and a scrap of paper in her bag. "I'm ready."

The graveyard was dark by the time Jo found the first grave, and she went looking for the other four names by flashlight. She lined all of them with salt, but that would only work if everyone coming to break the seal was possessed, and even then, she figured the demons could find some way to work around it – maybe one of them would leave their body while the others forced the person to get rid of the salt. It would delay them, but that was all she could hope for.

Four of the graves had markers that lay flush with the ground, but one of them had an old-fashioned tombstone, thick granite, and Jo picked that grave to use as her base. She texted the name and the basic directions to Lucy, then scoped out the surroundings. Other than the headstone, this grave didn't have an advantage over the others. There were trees and memorials blocking her view from all sides, and the stone would only be good cover from one direction.

She sighed and shook her head, then started arranging her weapons the way the wanted, so she could settle in to wait.

Thirty minutes passed, without anyone showing up. Jo changed positions often enough that she wouldn't have a limb fall asleep on her when she needed it, and tried not to let her attention wander too far. She didn't want to focus on the job enough that she'd psych herself out, but she didn't want to get tied up in an unrelated train of thought, either.

Jo wished she knew how many people would be coming, at least. She wondered if she could get away with calling Pam, to see if she could find out, but even though she pulled out her phone and held it in her free hand for a while, she wound up putting it back into her pocket. Pam would be getting ready for bed soon, and so would some of the other people she worked with. Jo didn't know much about how they found the information they did, but she knew that they liked to work in groups. She remembered how digging into the coven in Boston had wiped Pam out, and she remembered how Pam had hugged her before she left, with her hands resting heavily on Jo's hips. She didn't want Pam to overexert herself over this, and she didn't want her to worry, either. It wasn't like Jo would be leaving if she was outnumbered, and hell, she even had someone coming to work with her. She and Lucy would just deal with things as they came.

Jo saw flashlights at the far end of the cemetery and shifted again. She triple-checked that her guns were still loaded, and then covered up her hair with a black bandana, from her bag. She leaned around the stone as much as she thought was safe and tried to count them: four flashlights, and she thought eight people. The beams were jerked around, making Jo think the desecrators were working in teams of two. She bit her lip and texted this to Lucy, while they were all still far away from her; she was still careful to keep her phone hidden behind the headstone, and to cover the screen with one hand while she typed with the other.

_Ok_, Lucy sent back. _im in town, should be parked in 5 and making my way to u._

Jo put her phone away and hoped she wouldn't need it again.

She watched the people work their way towards her, and once they got closer, about even with the pond, she could see what they were doing. It wasn't very complicated; one person from the team held the light steady on the ground while the other dug up the sod with some sort of gardening tool on a stick, and then they spray-painted something on the markers themselves. They weren't digging anywhere near deep enough to hit the coffins, which meant they were moving quickly. Jo checked her watch and hoped Lucy would get here soon.

She didn't. Jo crouched behind the stone, with her favorite sawed-off in her right hand and her left hand on the knife, sheathed at her side. She watched the teams split up as they moved beyond the water. Two headed off to either side, but two came towards her. As they got closer, she saw that they were working off maps, and they headed directly from grave to grave. They knew exactly where they were going.

One of the teams stopped at a grave she'd laced with salt, and the guy doing the digging this time around stepped over the line without a problem. She sighed – partially in relief, because she wanted to handle eight demons by herself even less than she wanted to handle eight men – and then turned her attention back to the other group, coming her way. She ducked all the way behind the stone when one of them shone the light over the foot of the grave, so by the time he moved it to the stone itself, she was out of the light. She held her breath, trying to listen, and heard the tiny rattle of a can of spray paint, being shaken.

When it stopped, she stood up and leaned over the stone, bringing the butt of her gun down hard on the head of the guy. He dropped the can but didn't fall himself, and she hit him again, once more, until he did collapse onto the grass. She hoped that bleeding on a grave didn't count as desecrating it, because she'd pretty well fucked herself over if it did, and then she dropped as well, rolling to the side as his partner came after her. He went around one side of the stone while she rolled to the other, and she got her feet under her in time to spring at him, catching him around the waist. With the angle, she brought him down to the ground, but even while she punched him in the face, hoping to daze him, she could feel how much bigger he was than her. She had the upper hand at first, but he could easily take it back from her, and if she tried to settle this with blows, she thought he'd come out on top.

She hit him again for good measure and then put one hand on his throat, pressing down hard, while she took out her knife with the other. "Hush," she said, as she showed it to him and then lay the edge under his jaw, tilting the blade down for a moment so he could feel it. "I will kill you if you move."

He was breathing quickly, sneering at her, and Jo sneered right back. She'd put strips of duct tape on her jeans earlier, while she was waiting, and she peeled one off now without looking, then smoothed it over his mouth. She moved her knife to his groin and dug in with the tip a little, letting him feel it. His eyes widened and he stopped squirming as much, holding himself as still he could, except for the panting. "Put your wrists together," she said quietly, keeping up the pressure at his crotch. "Don't think for a second that I won't slice you up if you try something."

She wrapped his wrists, then taped his forearms to his chest before taking the roll of tape out of her back pocket and strapping his knees together, then his ankles. He'd be so much safer with his hands behind his back, but she wound tape around his fingers instead, hoping that keeping them immobile would do the trick well enough. When she finished, she looked around the cemetery again. The other teams were still working behind her, but she figured it was only a matter of time before they noticed they were one flashlight beam short.

Jo walked quietly back to the grave, meaning to tie up the other guy, but he was gone.

"Shit," she said under her breath, and spun in a circle, trying to see if she could place him. He was hurt bad, he couldn't have gone far, but she didn't see him. She looked behind the tombstone, where she'd been hiding, and as she peered over it, hands grabbed her, pulling her down on top of, and then under, somebody.

"Bitch," someone said, and settled his knees on her hips as he put his hands around her neck. "Think it's funny when someone hides behind things now?" He leaned down on her, like she'd done with his partner, except he was putting all his weight on her neck, and again, he was much bigger than she was. She scratched at his hands while he tried to gasp, and he yelled when she came away with skin under her nails, but he didn't let go. She'd dropped the knife she'd been carrying when he grabbed her, and she tried next to get one of her others out, but she couldn't reach the one strapped at the back of her belt, and the other was under his knee, where she couldn't get it, either. Her vision started to grey out around the edges and she reached up to smack him on the head again, as best she could. Her hand came away sticky with his blood. She hit him again and he wavered and fell off of her, to the side.

He was moaning a little and Jo knew she should move to tie him up, but she could only manage to scramble away as she caught her breath, taking huge, gasping gulps. She bumped into the handle of her knife as she went and grabbed it up again, and when he tried to stand up, coming towards her again, she held it out, pointing at him.

"Come on." Her voice sounded raw, and her throat still hurt, but she stood up. She thought she could probably outrun him, but then the grave would be unprotected, and the seal as well. He took a few steps towards her and then, after a dull thunk, fell to the ground.

Jo stared at him for a moment before looking up again to find Lucy, standing where he'd been. She had a knife in one hand, apparently having just hit him over the head again, and she slid it away before smiling at Jo.

"Just in time," Jo said quietly, and rolled her eyes at her rough voice. "We need to get him tied up. He's already been up once already."

She was even more thorough with him that she had been his partner, and she whispered to Lucy as they worked, telling her what had happened so far.

"Do you think they're going to circle back?" she asked, looking behind them at the flashlights, now far away. Jo guessed they were almost to the edge of the grounds.

"I don't know," Jo said. "There's not an exit over there that I could find, but if some of these people are locals, they might know better."

"Even if they're just going through the hedges or something, they're going to miss these two assholes eventually," Lucy said, pointing to the guys they had tied up. The one who'd been manning the flashlight was still watching them. His eyes reflected the moonlight and Jo absently gave him the finger.

"I guess we wait and see," Jo said. "How do you want to go after them if they come back? If they get all the way past us, we can sneak up behind them and take them out one at a time, but what if they see us before that?"

Lucy thought for a moment before saying, "I'm not above just shooting them."

"Really?"

She shrugged. "They've got us outnumbered, but if they're all packing like these two were, we have them outgunned. Plus, just by being here, they've proved themselves to be the bad guys."

"I don't know about just shooting them, though," Jo said slowly. She glanced at the guy again, meeting the second one's eyes. She could see his cheek bruising where she'd hit him, above the tape over his mouth. She'd been able to take him down and tie him up pretty easily, but she didn't think she could kill him. Not just like that.

"It's not my first choice," Lucy said. "I'm just saying, I haven't ruled it out. And I'd sure as hell rather shoot than let them catch us."

"Let's just hope it doesn't come to that," Jo said, after a moment.

They watched the lights closely, and eventually, Jo realized that they were getting brighter again – coming back, after all. She sighed and pointed this out to Lucy, who shook her head and started dragging the guys so they'd lie behind tombstones, where they'd hopefully be harder to see. The other teams hadn't joined up with each other again and they passed Jo and Lucy one at a time. None of them came within twenty feet of the grave Jo had picked, but she crouched beside the conscious guy anyway, keeping her blade on his neck. He stayed quiet.

Jo looked at Lucy and shook her head when all three teams passed out of eyesight, their flashlights disappearing towards the far side of the cemetery. "I can't believe that just happened," she said. "How did we get away with it?"

"They're running a crappy operation?" Lucy said, still staring off into the darkness where they'd gone. "Don't know why they'd leave these guys behind."

"That is a good question," Jo said, and made eye contact with the guy again. "Was that part of the plan, or did they just not care enough to come check on you?" she asked him.

He rolled his eyes, and she shrugged.

"Whatever," she said, and went back to Lucy. "I figure we've got to stay with them all night. We can leave them for the groundskeeper to find, but I don't trust them not to escape and get the grave after all, if we leave them."

"Someone needs to keep an eye on that one, too," Lucy said, gesturing to the guy they'd both hit over the head. "I don't trust his buddy to, after the way the others treated them."

"Good point," Jo said. She sat back down, leaning against one of the bigger markers and draping her shotgun over her knees. She kept one hand on it, watching the guy, and he broke eye contact first.

"You good to stay up?" Lucy asked. "I've got some off-brand No-Doz with me if you need any."

"I'm good for a while," Jo said, and shifted. Her thigh already felt cold, like it was going numb. "Won't be fun sitting, but I'll stay awake." She moved around again, trying to get comfortable, and Lucy frowned.

"You okay?"

"I think I'm sitting in a puddle," Jo said. "It's cold over here."

She frowned further and stood up, coming over to Jo. "Shit," she said, and pulled out her flashlight to shine it on Jo's hip. "You didn't notice?"

Jo's pants were cut open, and below it, her hip was as well. "No," she said, and shifted her leg a little. She still had full mobility, and she'd obviously dodged the big blood vessels, or she'd have bled out already, but it _hurt_, now that she noticed it. "I dropped my knife when he jumped me, though."

"Alright, well, hang on. I'll get it wrapped up for you."

Jo watched the guy, who watched her right back, while she put pressure on her hip with one hand. With the other, she moved the gun to aim at him, and he relaxed further into the grass.

Lucy came back with a bottle of water and a few big bandages. "I think your pants are a lost cause," she said, and ripped the fabric open a few inches further before pouring water over Jo's leg, and then over her own hands. "It's a good thing you didn't cut much deeper than this."

"You're telling me." Jo grit her teeth as Lucy put her hands inside the tear, then said, "No, you know what, I think I'd rather do it."

Lucy paused, and pulled back. "Sure. I should have asked."

"No, it's just, I can take it better if I know it's coming," Jo said. She let Lucy rinse her hands off, and then Lucy held her gun on the guy while Jo bandaged herself up, as quickly as she could. She'd need to redo it as soon as she got back to Pam's, but it'd last her until then. She took the bandana off her hair and tied it around the gash in her pants, hoping to keep some of the cold out. "You have some Tylenol or something? Mine's back in the truck."

The guy fell asleep sometime around three, and he was still out at sunrise, when Jo and Lucy packed up and left.

"You think the other guy's okay?" Jo asked, as they climbed into her truck. Lucy had parked a few blocks away, and Jo was dropping her at her car.

"I checked his pulse and breathing a few times," she said. "He'll probably need a doctor as soon as someone finds him, but he should be fine."

Jo glanced at her out of the corner of her eye, but she didn't press it. When she reached Lucy's car, she gave her a hug, waited until she started her engine, and then drove until she found a rest stop.

She got a few hours sleep in the cab of her truck before heading back to Pam's, pulling up to the driveway almost twenty-four hours after she left. Pam came to the front door before Jo cut her engine off, and she opened the driver's side door to call out to her.

"Hey," she said, and watched Pam's shoulders relax at even that one word. "Gimme a sec and I'll come on inside."

Pam came out to meet her, though, heading off the porch and down the driveway to stand beside the driver's side headlight. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," Jo said, even though she was favoring one leg as she went to get her bag from the bed of the truck. Slinging it over shoulder wasn't much fun, either, but she made it, and locked the door before going to Pam. "Here I am," she said, and grinned as Pam reached out towards her with one hand. She caught it in one of her own and bit her lip as Pam followed her arm up to her shoulder, and then traced both hands down her torso. Jo hissed through her teeth when Pam brushed over the bruise on her side, the cut on her hip, and Pam shook her head as she wrapped her arms across her own chest again.

"Shit," she said. "C'mon in already." She held Jo's arm as they navigated the step, and when Jo let her bag fall to the floor just inside the door, sighing as the weight dropped, Pam cursed again. "Dammit, you should have let me get that," she said. "Is there anything else?"

"No, that was it."

"It damn well have better been," she said. She steered Jo to the couch and pushed her down, putting both hands on her shoulders to do it. "Tell me where you're hurt," she said, sitting next to Jo and running her hands over her again, this time starting by gently prodding at her face.

"Christ, I'm fine," Jo said, turning her head away.

Pam just huffed and kept going. "I bet you cleaned yourself up in the cab of your truck without even washing your hands first."

"I washed them," Jo protested. She'd rinsed off with some water from a bottle first. They'd been perfectly clean.

"Would you please just tell me?" Pam asked, sounding tired. "I just want to know, and it'll be a lot fucking easier if you'll tell me instead of making me guess."

Jo sighed and shrugged. Pam's hand, still on her shoulder, rose and fell with the movement. "I've got a cut on my hip and a bruise on my side. Left side, both of them. That's really it."

Pam snorted. "Plus I bet you fell a few times, and got hit, and slept in your car, and are exhausted, and a few other things you're not even thinking about."

"Because none of that's bad," she said, not even trying to deny it. "It'll take care of itself in a day or two."

"No, _you'll_ take care of it for a day or two," Pam said. "Stay here and take off your boots." She stood up. "I'm getting you something to eat.

"You're worse than my mom," Jo mumbled, but she braced her hand on her side to bend over and untie her boots anyway.

Pam came back a few minutes later carrying a bowl of soup on a plate, along with a thick hunk of bread and an apple. She had a water bottle under one arm, and she felt for the coffee table with her foot before setting things down. "It's potato soup," she said, and Jo picked up the bowl. "Let me know if it's hot enough."

Jo glanced at her before picking up the spoon and taking a bite. The soup was rich and creamy, just the perfect temperature, and Jo moaned for Pam's benefit. "This is delicious," she said, once she swallowed the bite. "Did you make it?"

"Mmm hmm," Pam said. "It's not hard. I can show you how later, if you want."

"Sure," Jo said, although she had doubts about how much she'd be cooking in the near future. "That sounds good."

She ate it all, wiping up the last bites of soup with the bread, and then put the plate down, picking up the apple instead. It crunched between her teeth, satisfying after the softness of the soup and bread, and she licked juice from her lips after she swallowed.

"This is really good," she said, and watched Pam smile.

"Thanks," she said. "Do you need more water?"

The bottle was about half full. "No," Jo said. "There's plenty."

Pam picked up the bottle and sloshed it before taking Jo's word about it. When she put down the apple core, Pam pushed the plate towards the center of the table. "Shower now," she said. Jo sighed, but she wasn't going to argue with that, either.

Pam followed her into the guest bathroom and hesitated, just inside the doorway, when Jo went inside. "Do you need help?" she asked. Jo paused, thinking about lifting her arms high enough to take her shirt off, and Pam laughed quietly during the hesitation. "It's not like I'm gonna look," she said.

Jo laughed and ducked her head. "Yeah, okay." She unbuttoned her jeans and swallowed hard when Pam came all the way inside the room. "Can you hold onto me? I don't wanna fall over."

Pam held out her hands in Jo's general direction and she took them after a moment, guiding them back to her hips. Pam pressed her lips together as Jo unzipped her pants, and Jo took a big breath before pushing them down. Pam moved her hands out of the way for just a moment, and then put them back, warm on Jo's bare skin. Her fingers rested above the elastic of her panties, and when she rubbed her thumbs over Jo's belly, Jo was suddenly, achingly wet. Pam's hands moved with her as she shimmied the rest of the way out of her jeans, a light but constant touch, and by the time she kicked the pants to the corner, out of Pam's way, Pam's lips were parted.

Jo swallowed as she grasped the front hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head. It wasn't cold but she shivered anyway as she tossed it aside as well. Pam just stood there, breathing a little faster than normal, perfectly in time with Jo, and Jo put her hands on Pam's for a little longer than she needed to in order to push her away.

She had to swallow again before saying, "I'm gonna turn the water on." She turned and fought with the shower to get it warm enough. Pam was still there, next to the sink, and Jo frowned down at her own underwear before saying, "Can you — I need to take off my bra, and I don't think I — can you hold onto me again?"

She was blushing, but Pam smiled as she stepped close again. "Course I can," she said. Her voice was low as she settled her hands on Jo's waist, higher than they last time. The bruise on her side ached but Jo didn't mention it. She let Pam hold onto her while she tugged the sports bra over her head. When she let it fall to the floor she was essentially naked, with her nipples hard even in the steam from the shower, and with Pam's hands still on her body, warm and steady. Jo swallowed and stared up at Pam's mouth.

"Pam," she said, swaying closer, but Pam smiled and shook her head.

"Not now," she said. "Later, if you want, hell yeah, but not right now. You need some sleep first, babe."

"Christ," Jo said, glancing behind herself at the shower, then back to Pam. She licked her lips and then grinned. "Alright, okay, just one more thing." She put one hand over Pam's, pressing it into place, and then hooked her thumbs into her panties, pushing them down. Pam sucked in a breath between her teeth and shook her head.

"You play dirty, kid," she said, and then let go. "You good from here?"

Jo sighed. "Yeah," she said. "Will you help me when I'm done?"

Pam nodded and headed out of the room. "Just call me," she said back over her shoulder. Jo watched her go and then shook her head before stepping into the shower.

She let the water soak her hair first, rinsing the dirt and sweat out before she washed it, and then scrubbed her body. The bubbles calmed her, taking away a little of the tension as she worked the grime off her body, but it was hard, having only her own hands when she couldn't stop thinking about Pam, out of the room but somewhere within earshot. Neither of them had closed the door, and Jo slid one hand between her legs as she thought about getting herself off, making a show of it. She'd never really been into dirty talk, and there wasn't any point in coming up with things for Pam to watch her do, but Jo knew all about moaning. She could moan up a storm.

She slid two fingers between the lips of her pussy, finding herself just as wet and swollen as she'd expected, but although she rubbed over her clit a time or two, closing her eyes and biting her lip at the sensation, she didn't take it further than that. She was willing to wait this much longer, so they could do it together. Jo licked her fingers after she pulled them away, trying to imagine tasting them wet from another woman's pussy — one woman's in particular, christ, would Pam taste as sharp as she did? — and then rinsed the conditioner out of her hair and turned off the water.

She wrapped her hair up in one towel and tucked another one around her torso, and then looked down at the side of the tub. She'd stepped over it without problems getting, but she'd been dry then — her feet had been dry then, at least — not to mention more awake and alert, and it seemed like sort of a stupid risk now. Sure it did.

"Pam?" she called, and her voice sounded loud in the silence.

After a moment, Pam came to the doorway. "Hey," she said. "What do you need?"

Jo snorted. She need a lot of things. "Help me out of the tub?"

Pam crossed the room and held out her hands, and Jo grabbed them, wrapping her fingers around Pam's wrists. Pam held still and steadied her as she stepped out of the tub and onto the bath mat, and they stood there for a moment, neither of them letting go.

"You should get in bed," Pam said eventually, drawing away. Jo groaned a little. "I put your bag back in the room for you."

"Thank," she said. "Can you help me get there?" She could have made it on her own without problems, but she wanted the company. She wanted Pam in there with her.

"Yeah, okay," she said, and wrapped her arm around Jo's towel-covered waist as they headed off. Jo's bag was on the bed, and Pam stayed by her side when she dug a clean pair of panties and a tank out of it. Jo leaned against the side of the bed as she took the towels off and put the clothes on. Pam felt around for the towels on top of the mattress and gathered them up, heading for the door while Jo climbed carefully between the sheets.

"Wait," Jo said, slipping her feet beneath the sheets. She sat with her knees puled up to her chest, her hair wet around her shoulders, while Pam turned. "Can you — can you sit here with me for a while?"

Pam hesitated by the door, then nodded and came back. She left the towels by the foot of the bed and climbed onto the other side. She stayed on top of the covers while Jo stretched out underneath, careful to lie on her uninjured side. Pam reached over and stroked her arm once before pulling her hand away.

"Sleep," she said. "It'll all be here when you wake up."

.

 

The room was dim and shadowy when Jo woke up, and she felt disoriented for a moment. She'd rolled onto her back as she slept, but when she looked to the side and saw Pam still there, with her glasses off and her iPod lying on her chest, it all came back. Pam only had one ear bud in, and when Jo rolled onto her side again, Pam took out the other and rolled to face her as well.

"Hey," Jo said. "You stayed.

"Seems that way, doesn't it?"

Jo laughed, then put a hand on Pam's cheek. When Pam didn't pull back or move away, Jo leaned in and kissed her.

Pam hummed and covered Jo's hand with her own, and then slid her fingers along Jo's arm to her shoulder and tucked her fingers along Jo's neck. Jo shivered and licked Pam's bottom lip, then pulled it into her mouth. She'd never kissed a woman before and Pam's cheeks felt smooth against her own face. She slid her fingers into Jo's hair and just held on, letting Jo suck at her lip, until finally Jo pulled back. She kept her eyes closed and tipped her forehead forward, to rest against Pam's. Pam leaned a little to kiss Jo's cheek, and then her ear.

"Didn't sleep it off, I guess," she said.

Jo shook her head. "Did you really think I was going to?"

"Not really," Pam said. "But I wanted to make sure it wasn't just the exhaustion talking."

"It wasn't." Jo kissed her again. They weren't touching anywhere besides their hands on each other's faces, so she kicked the sheet down. When she moved closer, pushing one bare leg between Pam's, Pam hummed and rolled Jo onto her back, then hooked one leg over Jo's hip. She tightened her grip in Jo's hair and tugged her head back a little, then pushed her tongue into Jo's mouth. Jo shivered and let her, opening up wider. She grabbed Pam's arm with her free hand, just holding on, and when Pam broke the kiss, she pulled back a little, holding herself up on her elbow, and smiled down at Jo.

"Have you ever done this before?" she asked.

"With men," Jo said, and swallowed. Pam's fingers were still wound tightly in her hair.

She nodded, still smiling. "That's okay," she said. "That's sort of what I'd guessed."

"Are we..." Jo bit her lip and trailed off.

Pam let go of her hair and moved her hand to Jo's chest, putting the heel of her hand on Jo's breastbone, so her fingertips rested in the hollow of Jo's throat. "We're gonna do whatever you want." She leaned down and kissed her. "Jo, baby, what do you want?"

Jo felt herself blushing. "I don't know," she said. Pam raised her eyebrows, wrinkling her forehead, so Jo shook her head and started over. "I want to touch you," she said, and licked her lips. "I want to get you off, and I, I want to come, too. I want you to kiss me while I come."

"Good," Pam said, and Jo sighed. "Good. That's what we're gonna do, then." She sat up next to Jo and pulled off her shirt, then knelt up to wriggle out of her jeans, leaving her in nothing but the same set of underwear Jo had seen on her a few weeks before. Her mouth watered and she put her hands on Pam's hips, tugging her back down.

"Had to even the field a little," she said, stretching out next to Jo again. Jo rolled onto her side, lifting so Pam could slip an arm under her neck. She put her other hand at Jo's waist, toying with the stretch of skin between shirt and panties, and Jo shivered again, and pushed one leg back between Pam's.

"This is better, yeah?" Pam asked, and then leaned forward, nudging their mouths together before Jo could answer. She sucked at Pam's tongue and settled her palm over Pam's waist. Pam sighed and shifted her hips, moving closer, then slid her hand up Jo's torso, to cup her boob through her shirt. She just held it, making Jo arch, but Pam didn't do anything beside just kiss her for a long time. Jo relaxed somewhat before Pam swiped her thumb over her nipple. Jo hissed and pushed into it again, and Pam smiled against her mouth.

"Is that good?" she asked, moving her thumb again. Jo shivered and nodded. "Good." Pam worked her nipple a little longer, until it ached against the fabric of Jo's shirt, and then she slipped her hand into the tank's low-cut neck and cupped Jo's breast directly, smoothing her thumb back and forth over her nipple again before pinching it, making Jo gasp. She thrust her hips forward and was suddenly aware of just how wet her panties felt.

"Pam," she murmured, and Pam smiled against her face again. If Pam could have seen her, too, Jo would have pulled back far enough to make eye contact right now, to let Pam see just how wrecked this was getting her. Instead, she pulled Pam's bottom lip into her mouth again and just held it there, so Pam could feel all her shaky breaths.

Pam shifted her hand a little, moving to cup Jo's other breast, and Jo closed her eyes.

"You can touch me, too," Pam said, sounding amused, and Jo laughed a little.

"Can't think well enough," she said, but she slid her hand from Pam's hip, up towards her shoulders, anyway. She found her bra strap and followed it down to the center of her back, then only fumbled a little before unhooking it. She grinned and pulled the strap off Pam's arm, which only wound up tangling the two of them up, both of them trying to feel the other up at the same time.

"Here," Pam said eventually, sitting up and letting her bra fall away. Her breasts were firm and round, heavy when Jo reached up to cup them, and Pam smiled when she slid her hands under Jo's top. "You, too, she said. She ran her hands up Jo's sides, skimming her ribs and pushing her top up as she went, until it bunched in her armpits. Jo pulled it off, and Pam slid her palms up over her tits once Jo lay back down.

"Damn, I bet you look fucking glorious right now," Pam said, quietly.

Jo shrugged a little. She didn't feel glorious, with a fresh scab on her hip and her hair probably drying in snarls from having been slept on. Compared to Pam, sitting next to her with her hair in perfect waves, and her nipples hard and dark, and the little pooch of belly she wasn't even trying to suck in, Jo felt like a kid, awkward and unsure of herself. She felt in over her head.

"Come back here," she said, and tugged at Pam.

They took up their earlier positions, lying on their sides in deference to Jo's wounds, and Pam just kissed her for a long time. She wound their legs together as they palmed each other's breasts, but never took it below the waist.

It wasn't until Jo started rolling her hips against Pam, tiny thrusts, that Pam slid her hand to the small of Jo's back and tucked a few fingers into the back of her panties, over one ass cheek. Jo pulled away from her mouth, panting, and Pam nosed at her cheek.

"I think you said something about wanting to come," she said, and Jo nodded.

"Yeah, I —" She broke off and moaned when Pam shoved her hand all the way down her panties, barely brushing her fingertips over Jo's pussy from beneath. "Yeah, Pam, christ."

"Here," she said, and rolled onto her back, pulling Jo on top, to straddle her hips. She kept one hand on Jo's thigh and moved the other between her legs, stroking her thumb over Jo through her panties. The fabric diffused the pressure so that it wasn't strong enough anywhere, and Jo bit her lip as she ground against Pam's hand. Pam smiled but didn't change the way she touched her.

Jo finally whined, "Pam, please."

"Please what?"

"Will you touch me already?" Jo asked, bracing her hands on the bed above Pam's shoulders. "Please, I, this isn't enough."

Pam hummed and hooked one finger in the crotch of her panties, then pulled them to the side. She held them there and touched her with her other hand, the same too-light press, a single knuckle between Jo's lips. Jo twisted and arched, trying to get that finger onto her clit, but Pam moved with her, dodging the attempt.

"More," Jo said, and closed her eyes. "Pam, more, please."

Pam laughed and twisted her hand, finally nudging her finger up inside Jo. Jo cried out and clenched around her: it was nothing, almost, except for how easily she was able to slip her finger inside Jo, sliding with how wet Jo was. Pam pushed her finger in all the way, then pulled out and added another, and started thrusting slowly, softly. Jo opened her eyes and looked down at herself as she started moving with Pam's strokes. She shuddered all over at the sight of Pam spread out beneath her, flushing and almost panting, and then at her hand tucked up against Jo's crotch, the shining moisture on her fingers when she pulled them out of Jo's pussy.

"Pam," she murmured, and ducked to kiss her. Her hair fell down over both of them, hiding their faces away together, and Pam bit at her lips.

"Hold your panties for me," she said, and Jo propped herself up on one arm, above Pam's head, before grabbing at her underwear. Pam stroked her thumb over Jo's wrist before dipping a few of those fingers briefly between Jo's lips as well. Jo gasped when Pam started rolling her clit between her fingers, working it steadily, in contrast to the gentle movements of her fingers inside her body. Jo squirmed a little, wanting to thrust back, and Pam hummed, and nodded. "That's good," she said, and licked her lips. Jo rocked slightly, and Pam out-right moaned at her. "Yeah, that's good. Work for it with me."

Jo shuddered and dropped down to rest her forehead on Pam's shoulder as she started thrusting between her hands, squirming back to shove Pam's fingers a little deeper inside her and then moving forward again, to rub her clit against her hand.

"Is it enough?" Pam asked. Jo could feel her breath and she shifted her free arm to tangle her fingers in Pam's hair. "Do you need more?"

She shook her head. "Just, harder," she said. "A little harder. Both hands."

Pam hummed as she did it, thrusting harder and working her clit a little faster, and Jo squeezed her eyes shut. She thrust faster into it, helping Pam out, and pretty soon, she felt herself tightening and squeezing up around Pam's fingers.

"Yeah," Pam murmured, "do it," and she nosed against the side of Jo's face as she just kept working in and out of her, over her. Her fingers made noisy, moist squelches in Jo's body. Jo turned her face and, as she started coming, so hard she could barely breathe around it, Pam closed her mouth around Jo's lips, sucking on her bottom lip and kissing her while she came, just the way Jo had asked her to.

It felt like her orgasm lasted forever. Pam slowed her hands eventually, stopping the strong and powerful thrusts that had gotten Jo there, but she didn't pull away. She kept her fingers in Jo's pussy, staying right there as Jo shivered and clamped down through the aftershocks, and she kept her other hand on her clit, too. She brushed a finger over the too-sensitive flesh every so often, making Jo gasp and arch, trying to get away from the touch even while she wanted more of it, too.

"Can you go again?" Pam asked, giving a slow and gentle stroke in and out of Jo's pussy.

Jo shivered. "Sometimes," she said, being honest, and then took it further. "Not usually with someone else. More often I can if it's just me."

Pam hummed, and then pulled her fingers away. Jo gasped at losing the contact, and Pam kissed her cheek. "We can try again later," she said, and brought her hands up to her mouth, one by one, to lick them clean. Jo shuddered and rolled off to the side, pulling her soaked panties all the way off. Pam's fingers were wet, shining with it, with _Jo_, and Pam's lips, after she reached for Jo again, shone as well. Jo leaned in and kissed her, always loving the taste of herself in someone else's mouth, and she rolled onto her side again, pressing herself against Pam. Pam took Jo's hand and put it low on her hip, pressing her fingers against her hip, and Jo rearranged herself so she could slide her hand down between Pam's legs, touching her pussy through the damp fabric.

Pam moaned and pushed into the touch but didn't push otherwise, and Jo hid her face in Pam's neck, in her skin and her hair, while she stroked a few times, completely unsure of what she was doing. She never teased herself like this, had never tried it from this angle, and after a moment, she bit her bottom lip as she moved her hand, sliding her fingers down into Pam's panties. Pam moaned again and stroked one hand shakily over Jo's arm, and Jo mouthed absently at Pam's neck as she slipped her fingers over Pam's hair, dipping down to her pussy.

It was just — wet, at first, was all Jo could feel. Wet, and smooth, and completely different than her own pussy had ever felt. She'd always been concentrating on the way it felt to be touched, when she touched herself, but now that she had her hand on Pam, the only thing she _could_ feel was what it was like to be touching, to be giving the pleasure instead of receiving it. After a moment, readjusting her expectations, it was less weird, and she skimmed her fingers down between Pam's lips, and then up to find her clit.

"Mmm, there you go," Pam said, and Jo wasn't surprised at all that she was talking about it. Of course she was talking about it; it was what Pam did. Jo kissed her shoulder and then lifted her face again, watching Pam as she awkwardly pulled her underwear down. She kept her gaze on Pam's face, watching her bite her lip while she lifted up her hips, and then Jo wrapped her hand around Pam's hip again as she leaned in to kiss her.

"I don't really know what I'm doing here," she said, as she rubbed at her pussy again, this time pushing in and up slightly with one finger.

Pam laughed against her mouth and spread her legs, wriggling around. "I wouldn't say that," she said. "You know what you like, right?"

"Yeah, but —"

"No, it's a pretty good guess that I like it, too," Pam said. She pressed her hand over Jo's and pushed a little, thrusting back against the finger that was almost, but not quite, inside her. "Whatever you want, Jo. We'll figure out something that works."

Jo bit her lip and then glanced down Pam's body, towards where their hands disappeared between her legs. "I want to go down on you," she said. "Is that okay?"

Pam laughed again. "Fuck yeah, it's okay." She grinned and then pulled her hand away to stretch her arms above her head, squirming a little. "Knock yourself out."

"I hope it goes better than that," Jo said, and swallowed as she crawled down the bed. Pam's legs were still spread pretty wide and she settled between them, not quite trying not to look at Pam's pussy but managing to do so anyway. She could _smell_ her, the same scent she recognized from being wet herself, and she kissed the smooth inner sweep of Pam's thigh before looking at her. Her pussy was wet and pink, spread open where Jo had touched her earlier, and Jo bit her lip again as she stroked one finger between her lips again, then brought it to her mouth.

Pam tasted like she had, in the shower. Jo smiled and leaned in to lick her, to press her tongue between Pam's lips, and they both moaned when she wriggled it into Pam, feeling her warm and tight around her tongue before she'd even gotten her fingers all the way inside her. She smiled, the best she could, and then pulled back to mouth at Pam's clit, smiling again when Pam jerked.

"Fuck," she said quietly, and put one hand into Jo's hair. Jo took a breath and licked again. She was ready for it, when Pam rocked up this time, and Jo moved with her, closing her mouth around Pam's clit. She sucked, then slid two fingers inside Pam's cunt. This was nothing like fingering herself: the angle was messed up, and she wasn't entirely sure what she was doing for a moment. Pam, though, thrust against Jo's hand, and tightened her grip in Jo's hair, so Jo guessed something was right. She stroked her fingers in and out of Pam's body, tilting her chin to one side to make room for her wrist, and kept licking her clit. She closed her eyes and settled into it, only focusing on the taste of Pam, the feel of her, and when Pam gripped her hair harder, holding her against her pussy as her hips bucked and she clenched down on Jo's fingers, she was almost surprised.

Jo backed off when Pam let go of her, and she kissed the inside of Pam's thigh before pulling her hand away. She wiped her fingers on her own panties, shoved them onto the floor, and crawled back up the bed, curling up on her side next to Pam. Pam had one arm thrown over her face, and she was panting, with her mouth wide open. Jo smiled and kissed her shoulder.

"So," she said eventually, "what's the plan for tomorrow? Because if it's anything other than more of that, I'm going to be seriously unhappy."

"Tomorrow can be for staying in bed," Pam allowed, smiling. "Not forever, but tomorrow."

.

 

Jo woke up early the next morning, out of long habit, and found Pam still asleep, stretched out next to her. They were still in the guest bed, which wasn't really big enough for two people to be able to stretch out, but it was a great place for two people to cuddle up. Jo eyed the warm strip of bed next to Pam's side for a long while before deciding that she didn't want to fuck up her sleep schedule if she didn't need to. She got up and started a pot of coffee, wearing a long, grey cotton bathrobe she'd seen hanging in the guest closet when she first unpacked. She grabbed Pam's blue robe off the back of her bedroom door, hoping she wouldn't fuck things up by moving it, and brought it back to bed with her, draping it over the end of the mattress, near Pam's feet.

Jo pulled a paperback out of her bag, took off the robe, and climbed back into bed. Pam stirred as the mattress shifted, stretching and rolling towards Jo. Jo smiled and, after Pam had already bumped into her feet without acting surprised to find another person in the bed, scooted down so they were level on the pillows.

"Morning," Pam said. Her voice was husky, and she cleared her throat.

"Morning," Jo said, and hooked her arm around Pam's waist. She rolled onto her side, matching Pam's position, and leaned in to rub their noses together before kissing her. It was a short kiss, neither of them opening their mouths, but Jo hummed when she pulled away. "What's your plan for today?"

Pam laughed and shrugged. "Nothing. I don't take clients on Sunday and you sure as hell don't need to be running around today."

"It's Sunday?" Jo asked, trying to think back and line up the days.

Pam shook her head. "Ridiculous. Yes, it's Sunday."

"What should we do for breakfast?" Jo asked. "I already started the coffee.

"I know you're trying to change the subject," Pam said, still smiling.

"Then you should go with it," Jo said.

Pam laughed and rolled away, standing up beside the bed. She was still bed-wrinkled, and she stretched her arms high over her head. She was facing the wall, but Jo watched the muscles of her back shift as she moved.

"I put your robe at the foot of the bed," she said. "Not that I want you to cover up or anything, but you wear it all the time, so I figured." She shrugged, stopping.

"Thanks," Pam said, and touched the side of the bed once before walking around it. She swung the robe up and on in one fluid, practiced movement, and tied it without really pulling it closed over her boobs, then grinned at Jo. "Figure I can stop being so modest now, hmm?"

"It was never that modest to begin with," she said, and looked away. She put the other robe on when she got out of bed. "I could see your nipples through it every night."

"Could you now," Pam said. She grinned widely, with the very tip of her tongue between her teeth, and then headed to the kitchen.

Pam made Jo scramble the eggs,while she carefully diced an apple and put the chunks into a pot of oatmeal. They were warmed through but still crunchy when they ate, and Jo wished she'd paid more attention to everything Pam stirred into the pot.

They showered, both of them in Pam's bathroom at once. Jo had never been on this side of the shower curtain and she shivered as Pam pressed her into the tile, both of them letting their conditioner soak into their hair, and slid her fingers into her pussy again, kissing Jo as she worked three and then four into her. The stretch was almost too much, especially when Pam spread her fingers apart inside Jo's body, and she sucked hard at Pam's bottom lip.

"Is this good?" Pam asked, putting her fingers as deep as they'd go and holding onto Jo's waist with the other hand.

"Yes," Jo said, nodding. "Yeah, it is."

Pam hummed, licked at Jo's lips. "Touch yourself," she said, and Jo put her fingers on her clit immediately, stroking and rubbing. "I want you to come like this," Pam said. Jo bit her lip and worked herself until she did.

She stayed pressed against the wall after she came down, and Pam just kissed her for a long time until Jo grasped one thigh and got her to prop her foot in the raised corner of the tub, spreading herself open. Jo slid her fingers back and forth over Pam's lips, barely touching her, until Pam was rocking her hips and cursing. Jo pushed three fingers up inside her body then, curving her fingers back towards herself and rubbing. She didn't really know how to find someone else's g-spot — she'd only had spotty luck in finding her own, in the past — but she figured if she touched a wide enough swath of Pam's body, she'd luck out eventually.

And yeah, eventually Pam started grunting, and the smooth roll of her hips turned into outright thrusting. Jo rubbed the fingers of her other hand over Pam's clit, only a few times, and then Pam dropped her head to Jo's shoulder and shuddered as she came, clenching hard around her fingers.

She wanted to get back into bed after that, to sleep and wake up and do it again, but Pam shook her head. She twisted her hair into a bun on top of her head and went to the kitchen, heading after lunch. Jo followed her eventually, after getting dressed in one of Pam's skirts, the long kind she'd been eying ever since she got there, and one of her own tank tops. No bra, no panties, and she felt very exposed for having most of her body covered.

They sat on the couch after that, sharing the ear buds to Pam's iPod and listening to trance music. It was the wrong stuff for lying around, with her head in Pam's lap and Pam's fingers carding through her hair, but with the music only in one ear, and turned down low, it made Jo drowsy instead of waking her up. She turned her face towards Pam, rubbing her nose into her shirt, and felt her laugh. She closed her eyes and dozed off for a few minutes, taking the sleepy happiness that she'd wanted earlier.

Pam talked her through stir-frying some chicken and vegetables for dinner, showing her every step while Jo stayed out of the way and made rice. Afterward Pam pulled out a bottle of wine, like she'd been threatening to whenever things got too date-like. They drank it out of old jam jars, changing the mood a little, but Jo had grown up around alcohol, and around people drinking. She knew better than to think that the stemware meant things were different. Drinking was important for why you did it, not just for how, and she'd seen plenty of people drink themselves into trouble because they didn't know that.

"I don't know much about wine," Jo said, over the rim of her glass. Whatever this was, it was pink and crisp, slightly sweet, but Jo didn't know anything about it at all, beyond that.

"Really?" Pam asked, grinning a little and then sipping.

Jo shrugged. "I can talk your ear off about beer and whiskey, but we didn't exactly have a big wine-drinking clientele."

"Nah, I guess not."

"Tastes good, though," Jo offered. It did taste good, and it wasn't too dry. She'd never understood why people liked dry wine.

"Pretty sure I got it from the grocery store," Pam said. "It's not some big fancy thing."

"It's nice," Jo said. She slid to the side, to the center of the bench, and pressed her leg against Pam's.

"Yeah," Pam said, and smiled, tipping her face up to the night sky. "It is."

.

 

Jo pulled her phone out of her pocket the next morning, while she waited for her computer to start up. She'd called her mom on the way back from the cemetery, but they hadn't talked long, and Jo called again when her email didn't immediately come up on the screen.

"Hi, honey," her mom said, when she picked up. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything's great." Jo cradled the phone between her face and her shoulder for a moment. "I'm just catching up with stuff online."

"You're not on the road yet?"

"No, I just got back. Hopefully I'll be able to stay here for a few more days before I have to get going again." Jo frowned. "Why, is there something going on?"

"Thanksgiving," her mom said, after a very long pause. "Tomorrow's Thanksgiving, Jo."

Jo closed her eyes. "Oh, crap. I completely forgot."

"It's an annual holiday," her mom said. "I didn't know you needed a reminder."

"God, I'm sorry," Jo said. She checked her computer's clock. "Do you want me to try to get there?"

"No, it's fine." Her mom was using the voice that meant it was not fine at all, and that Jo would be hearing about this for a while, but also that there wasn't any arguing with her. "You probably got banged up on the job, didn't you?"

"Not that bad," she said, although her hip still hurt.

Ellen snorted. "I know what that means."

"Mom," Jo said. "Come on. I didn't know you were going to care."

She snorted. "Obviously."

"I'll come for Christmas," she said, spur of the moment. She didn't actually know whether or not that would work out – that statistic about more people killing themselves over the holidays than at any other time was true, and it made for more angry spirits around that time of the year. But she'd at least make the offer.

"I'd sure hope so," her mom said. "Bring Pam, if you want. But I'm sick of only talking to you about work."

"Sorry," Jo said. Her phone beeped in her ear, a call on the other line, and she frowned. "Hey, I've gotta go, but I'll call you back, okay?"

"Yeah, bye, honey," her mom said. Jo switched the call over and answered it.

"This is Jo," she said, the way she usually answered numbers she didn't recognize.

"Hi Jo, this is Michelle Turner. We've been emailing?"

"Yeah, sure," Jo said. Since she already had her email open, she pulled up her most recent conversation with Michelle and skimmed through it. "Yeah, of course. What's up?"

"I heard you know something about a seal in Boston," Michelle said.

Jo sat up straighter and skimmed through the emails again: they were a few weeks old, and she and Michelle hadn't talked about anything bigger than the difference between ghouls and shape shifters. "Sorry, what? I don't know what you're talking about."

"Some people forwarded me your email," she said. "Bobby to Tamara to me. I'm staying with some friends right now about an hour out of Boston, and I want in. I want to help."

"What kind of friends are these?" Jo asked.

"Family friends," she said. "Our moms grew up together. More like cousins than anything else. They don't know, about the hunting."

"Okay," Jo said. She thought for a moment and then pulled up the conversation she'd been having directly with Tamara, about the coven. "It's not like I'm in charge of it or anything, but I can get you in touch with the people who are working on it." She frowned. "But if you've already talked to Tamara about it, I don't know what else I can tell you. It's pretty much her show."

"Oh, yeah, I know," Michelle said. "We've got everything pretty much figured out. But I figured you should know, too, since you've got all the information for everything. Just so none of it gets mixed up."

"Uh." Jo frowned further. "Okay. Here, I'm sending you all the information we have about the coven, just in case there's some of it you don't have, but other than that, if you're already in touch with the people working it, there's not that much I can give you."

"No, that's cool," Michelle said. "I'm having computer problems, so I figured I'd just call instead." She laughed. "This way, I can make sure I have the right number, too."

"Yeah," Jo said, still confused. "Well, you got me."

"Thanks," Michelle said. "You're emailing it, right?"

"Already did."

"Okay, well, I'll answer you there whenever I get a chance. Nice talking to you, Jo."

"You, too." Jo ended the call and put her phone down on the table, probably a bit harder than she should having, wishing there was some good way to slam a cell phone down.

"What was that about?" Pam asked, from behind the couch. Jo startled a little and twisted around to look at her.

"I didn't hear you come in," she said.

"Sorry." Pam ran a hand over the back of the couch and, when she bumped into Jo's shoulder, twisted her fingers in the hair falling over it.

"S'okay," Jo said, and shrugged. "I just had a few weird calls, is all."

"Oh?" Pam let go and walked around the couch, to sit next to Jo. Jo turned a little to face her, so that their legs brushed.

"That was Michelle Turner, do you know her?"

Pam shook her head. "The name's familiar, but not other than that. Hunter?"

"Yeah, around my age, I think." Jo shrugged. "Not sure, we've never met in person. She just called about the seal in Boston, and." She shrugged again, almost unsettled now that she thought about it. "It was like she wanted me to know, like I was in charge of it. She said that wasn't it, but that was the idea I got. There wasn't any reason for her to talk to me about it otherwise, you know?"

Pam shrugged as well. "Sometimes people like having someone in charge," she said. "Maybe she figured that was you."

"What?" Jo raised her eyebrows.

"I've had someone say something like that, to me. I think it looks like the two of us are running things, to some people."

"Are you serious?"

Pam nodded. "It's only been one person who's said it, but from the outside, I get how it looks like we're at the middle of things."

"But, we're not," Jo said. "All we're doing is playing phone tag with people. And not even that many people! And they all know each other to begin with, so it's not like we're bringing in new blood or anything." She snorted and turned back to her laptop, looking at the new messages on the screen in a new light. "It's not like we've even been getting a lot done. It looks like all my new messages today are just from people doing normal hunts."

"Better than nothing," Pam said. "Isn't that what you told me, a while ago?"

"It's still weird," Jo said, after a moment. "I'm not – I can't get over people thinking I'm in charge. I'm still really new at this, compared to some of the people I've been emailing here."

"But no one else is emailing them," Pam said. "Not all of them, anyway. I've thought for a long time that you guys need some centralized way to communicate, and it seems like other people do, too."

"We already had that," Jo said. "With the blogs." She skimmed the names in her inbox again. "But I guess some of these guys were never on there."

"It doesn't have to be that big a deal," Pam said. She wrapped one arm firmly around Jo's shoulders and pulled her in closer. "C'mon, have you had breakfast yet?"

.

 

A cold front came through a few days into December. It hadn't been warm for a while, but this was cold enough that Jo got up in the middle of the night to get the comforter from the guest room, and pile it on top of Pam's bed.

"You'd be warmer if you slept in more clothes," Pam said quietly, as Jo climbed back in.

"I'd be warmer if you'd turn the heat up some," Jo grumbled back. "I told you I'd help foot the bill."

"I like it like this," Pam said. She reached for Jo, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer. "If it's not snowing, it's not that cold."

"I'm pretty sure it's cold enough to snow. Just because it's not doesn't mean anything." Jo rolled on her side and pressed her face into Pam's neck, where it was warm.

"You're fine," Pam said, sounding like she was smiling. Jo bit softly at her neck and she laughed, then slid one hand up the back of Jo's shirt. Her fingers were cold and Jo yelped and squirmed. "Come on, it is not that bad."

Jo felt around with one bare foot until she found the gap between Pam's socks and her pajama pants. She wriggled her toes up until they touched skin, and Pam hissed between her teeth, jerking away.

"Fine," she said, and pulled her hand out of Jo's shirt. Jo missed the touch, once it was gone, so when Pam blew on her hands and rubbed them together before sliding one back up Jo's pajamas, she was happy. Pam pulled her in a little tighter and Jo came to her, sliding one of her legs between Pam's and wrapping one arm around her waist. Her other arm was still between their bodies, sort of awkwardly squashed until Jo grinned and turned her wrist, cupping one of Pam's breasts. Pam laughed again and Jo rubbed her thumb over Pam's nipple, which, like her own, had already been hard from the cold.

"If it was warmer," Jo said, pinching for a moment before going back to steady swipes of her thumb, "we could do something about this."

"We could do something about it anyway," Pam said, arching her back to push into Jo's hand. Jo pulled her in tighter with her other arm as she pinched again, and leaned up to find Pam's mouth in the dark.

"Oh?" she said, after kissing her for a few moments.

"Mmm hmm." Pam pulled her hand out of Jo's shirt and slid it between her legs, rubbing at her pussy through her clothes. "Not cold like this, is it?"

Jo rolled her hips into Pam's hand, but she bit her lip after a while and shook her head. "Not enough like this," she said, and closed her eyes. "Can you –"

She didn't finish, but Pam moved anyway, pushing her hand into Jo's pajama bottoms and touching her through her panties. "Better?" she asked, even while she teased Jo, stroking her way too lightly.

Jo shook her head and shifted around, letting go of Pam's back and blowing on her fingers to warm them slightly before putting her hand straight down the front of Pam's pajamas, skimming under her panties as well. "Not enough," she repeated, and slid one finger between Pam's lips, separating them and pressing her fingertip into Pam's body for just a moment before withdrawing, and going back to rubbing, slow and light. Pam shifted her hips, biting at her own bottom lip, and Jo grinned and licked over her teeth. She kept her finger firmly away from Pam's clit, teasing and teasing.

"You win," Pam said, and she finally put her hand all the way into Jo's panties, rubbing between her lips and then rolling her clit between two slick fingers. She didn't take it slow at first, didn't ease Jo into it, and Jo shuddered. She moved to rub at Pam's clit, then, pressing hard with the pads of her fingers. Pam smiled against her mouth and changed pace, matching Jo's speed on her own body.

"Mmm," Jo said, thrusting into her hand. "We doing this together, here?"

"Maybe," Pam said. She rubbed up and down Jo's clit, going from her fingertips to her palm and then back again in one steady movement, and Jo shivered and mimicked her. "Do you think we can both get off the same way?"

"Dunno," Jo said. They liked different things, and what worked for Jo didn't always work for Pam. "Worth a try, though."

Pam hummed and shifted her arm, pulling at the elastic layers around Jo's waist. "Can you do your thumb and your fingers like this?" she asked, turning her wrist to slip two, maybe three, fingers inside Jo's pussy, and then thumb once over her clit.

"Dunno," Jo repeated, squirming against Pam's hand. She tried to grind down, to get Pam to move again, but Pam laughed and shook her head.

"Try," she said.

Jo fumbled around until she matched Pam's position, with two fingers snug inside her pussy and her thumb just next to her clit – not touching, not yet, but ready. She nosed at Pam's face until she found her mouth and kissed her again, pushing her tongue between Pam's lips. She'd meant to say something, _let's go_, but she started rocking her hips as Pam sucked at her tongue, and from there, they were on the same page. Pam pulled out of her pussy and thrust smoothly back in, shifting her thumb to ride over Jo's clit with the motion of her hand, and Jo followed her, gasping at how Pam's body clenched around her fingers on the way out, and then opened up again so easily for them.

"Is it good, like this?" she asked, talking into Pam's mouth.

Pam nodded, but she sped her hand up slightly. "Maybe a little faster? Does faster work for you?"

"Not too much faster," Jo said, moving to match Pam's pace. "But – yeah, there. There's good."

"Mm, there is good." Pam was thrusting to meet Jo's hand now, hard enough that she could hear her fingers sliding in and out of her body, but Pam didn't try to make things go faster. Jo felt her bearing down, which always meant she was close, and she sped her hand up on her own, pushing harder into Pam's pussy and trying to keep her thumb steady on her clit. Pam didn't match her this time – in fact, she essentially stopped, just keeping her fingers inside Jo and her thumb swiping awkwardly around her clit – but Jo didn't mention it. She twisted her free arm around between them to cup Pam's breast through her shirt again, and when she pinched her nipple through the fabric, Pam clenched up and came, squeezing down tightly on Jo's fingers.

Jo stayed with her as well as she could, trying to keep thrusting even as Pam bucked her hips. She slowed as Pam did, and by the time she was only shivering with aftershocks, Jo had stopped entirely, but she hadn't yet pulled out. She leaned her forehead against Pam's and shifted her hips a little fretfully, unable to ignore someone inside her body, but when Pam sighed and leaned to kiss her, Jo smiled and kissed her back.

"You want to go again?" she asked, and flicked her thumb once, very lightly, over Pam's clit.

Pam hissed and shook her head. "Nah, don't want to get all wet and sweaty."

Jo snorted. "Wet's a lost cause," she said, and carefully pulled out of Pam's pussy. She tried not to smear her fingers all over Pam's clothes or skin, or the sheets, but once she got her hand out from under the covers, there wasn't really anything to do with it, besides lick herself clean. Pam groaned after a moment and nosed at Jo's wrist until she pulled her hand out of her mouth.

"God damn," Pam said, and kissed Jo while she started rubbing at her clit again. Jo's hand was still right there, by their faces, and Pam turned to suck at her fingers as well. She kept Jo's fingers in her mouth while she thrust into her pussy again, starting slow but moving with the pace Jo set. Pam sucked for a while, sliding her tongue between Jo's fingers, and Jo panted, feeling her orgasm just starting to build. She rocked her hips back and forth, arching into Pam's hand, but when Pam bit down on her fingertips, digging into the sensitive skin, Jo gasped and came, almost surprising herself.

Pam didn't back off, and Jo eventually had to roll away a little, shaking her head even as she smiled. "No more," she said.

"You're sure?"

Jo nodded. "Let's go to sleep."

"I already was asleep," Pam said. She pulled her hand out of Jo's panties and leaned over to wipe it on the side of the mattress. Jo snorted and rolled back onto her side. Her underwear was sticky and wet, but she wasn't going to get up and deal with it.

When Pam back to the middle of the bed, she stretched out for a while. Jo wrapped one arm around her waist, this time staying safely on the outside of her clothes, and kissed her temple, then her cheek. Pam smiled and turned to kiss her as well, hitting her chin before getting her mouth, and then rolled over onto her side. Jo spooned up close behind her, fitting their knees together, and she pressed her face into Pam's hair.

"You'd better be warm enough now," Pam said, and then kicked backwards at Jo when she started laughing.

.

If Jo was being honest with herself, she did feel invested in the Boston job. She wanted to see how it ended up, and in the back of her mind, she'd been planning on driving out to help, if she didn't have anything else to do. Everyone working the job – Tamara and a few of her old buddies, and Michelle, and a new kid that Jo hadn't even heard of before – knew what they were doing, and they could get it done without Jo's help. But she wanted to see it go down, regardless.

Of course, this meant she found something of her own to work then. She spent a week in Nevada, going after the spirit of a casino floor chief from the 1950s, and generally wishing she'd packed warmer clothes. By the time she got back to Pam's house, all that was left for her to do was read emails from the team that did work it.

"It went fine without you," Pam said, sitting in her armchair while Jo scrolled through the messages.

"I know," Jo said. "I never thought it wouldn't." She looked at the pictures Michelle had attached, of the small house most of the coven had lived in, and shook her head. "Probably went better without me. They were working in a really tiny place. Last thing they'd need was someone else to get in the way."

"Like I said, worked out fine," Pam repeated. "Let me know when you're done with that, okay? I think I've got another for you."

Jo sighed. "Yeah, that's great."

"You sound thrilled," Pam said.

"Just tired," Jo said. "Give me a few hours more sleep, and I'll be excited about it." She read the rest of the message quickly, though, and then put her computer down to come perch on the arm of Pam's chair. She tucked her stocking feet under Pam's thigh and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "Alright, so what's this one about?"

"It may not be something we can do anything about," Pam warned, and then explained. Jo went back to the couch to type up what Pam was telling her, after a while, and she emailed it to her usual list of people, but she agreed with Pam. This seal looked like it was entirely demon on demon violence, and Jo doubted they were going to be able to stop it.

"I'm just going to try not to worry about that one," she said, and closed the browser. Her calendar had been beneath it, and Jo frowned when she saw the date, a few days into December. She lost track of her days on the job sometimes, but she hadn't realized it was this late. "My mom wants you to come from Christmas," she said, just blurting it out.

"Really," Pam said, raising her eyebrows. "When did this come up?"

"A while ago," Jo said, and clicked at something at random, to have something to do. "She was more upset than I'd thought that I didn't come to Thanksgiving, so I told her I'd come home then, and she told me to invite you, too."

"Okay," Pam said. She sucked at the inside of one cheek. "Do you want me to come?"

"Yeah," Jo said, easily. It wasn't a hard decision. "Why, do you not want to come?"

"God, this is why I don't date kids," Pam muttered, and then said louder, addressing Jo, "How exactly do you want me to be there? As your friend?"

"Oh," Jo said, and felt her cheeks heating up. "I hadn't thought of it like that."

"Obviously," Pam said, but now she was smiling. She got up and came to sit next to Jo, putting an arm around her shoulders. "Do you want me to come?"

"What were you going to do for Christmas?" Jo said, dodging. "We didn't really do anything for Thanksgiving, but I didn't even ask."

"I get together with some friends in town, most years. Once or twice I've taken a cruise." She shrugged. "It's not that big a holiday for me."

Jo tried to imagine Pam at her mom's place. They hadn't done much at home, after Dad, but the bar had been open every Christmas evening, from three until nine, and since they weren't open either too late or too early, they drew in their regulars, instead of people who just needed someplace to drink their loneliness away. That was what she associated with Christmas – lots of people she knew, pleasantly buzzed and all talking at the same time – and she wanted Pam there.

"I want you to come," Jo said, and turned to face her. "Is that okay?"

Pam nodded. "Sure." She leaned in and kissed Jo, and Jo grabbed at her shirt, holding on.

"I haven't told her –" She broke off and blushed. "She just invited you, not because I told her anything."

Pam nodded again. "Do you want to tell her?"

"I don't know," Jo said. "I don't think she'd have a problem with it, but we never talked about it before." She frowned. Forget talking about it: she'd never even thought about how her mom would react.

"I think she'd be fine," Pam said, and she was almost laughing.

"What's so funny?" Jo asked.

"You've thrown your mom a pretty big curve ball, with the hunting thing," Pam said. "How's she reacted, since then?"

Jo shrugged. "A lot better than I expected, once she got used to it."

"Uh huh," Pam said, and leaned in to kiss her again. "I think she'd be the same way with this."

"I don't know," Jo said, although she saw Pam's point.

"You don't have to do it right this second," Pam said. She shrugged. "Maybe we go up there, and see how things go, and then tell her after."

"Maybe," Jo said. She bit her own lip. "What exactly would we be telling her?"

Pam raised an eyebrow. "Have you not been paying attention?" she asked, sliding one hand up Jo's thigh for a moment.

"No, I mean." Jo cut herself off and laughed. "This sounds stupid. What word would we use?"

"I think the term is girlfriend," Pam said, sounding like she was on the verge of laughter again. "You may have heard it before."

"Yeah, and it sounds cheesy," Jo said.

"Well, I don't think we've been at this long enough for partners," Pam said. "So everything more serious than that is out, too."

Jo hummed. "It still sounds cheesy," she muttered. Pam shook her head and kissed her again, and Jo let it go.

.

Jo double checked her directions as she drove to pick Pam up from one of her friend's houses, on her way back into town after dealing with a spirit in Missouri. She'd gone out of her way to meet up with the guy who sold her silver in bulk, and then Pam called her, needing a ride.

"Sylvia is in no condition to drive anywhere," she'd said, slurring her own words slightly. "And I don't want to walk all the way, it's cold as fuck."

"It's not that bad," Jo said, laughing, although she was wearing multiple layers under her coat and scarf. "Just the other night, you said you liked it like this."

"I like hiding out in bed when it's like this," Pam said, and then hummed. "We could do that when we get back, if you want."

Jo'd laughed again. "Yeah, whatever. Just tell me how to get there."

They weren't the best directions in the world, and it was dark by the time Jo got there. She'd never met Sylvia before, and so she wasn't expecting to be ushered inside the house as soon as she knocked on the door.

"She's still putting her boots back on, come on in," she said, and closed the door behind her before holding her hand out to Jo. "I'm Sylvia Vane."

"Jo Harvelle," Jo answered, and raised her eyebrows when Sylvia used her grip on Jo's hand to pull her in for a hug.

"Pam was just talking about you," she said, once she let go.

"Good things, I hope," Jo said.

"Decent enough," Pam said, coming into the room. She had her boots laced up over her jeans and carried her coat in one arm, and she frowned at Sylvia before turning to Jo. "Come on, let's get out of here before this one keeps talking."

"No, stay a while," Sylvia said. She smiled at Jo. "You want something to drink? We still have some wine left."

Jo glanced at Pam, who had one eyebrow raised in her direction, and then shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "I've been on the road for a long time today, and we've still got to get home..."

"Come on," Sylvia said. "One glass. Hell, more than that. I've got a guest room if the two of you just want to stay."

Jo hesitated, looking again to Pam, and Pam shook her head after a long moment. "Fine," she said. "One more glass. Only one."

"There," Sylvia said, still grinning. "I knew better than that."

"Now I've got my boots on for nothing," Pam said, and she shook her head again as she turned back the way she'd come, going further into the house. She stopped at the far end of the entryway and held a hand out to Jo. "C'mon, babe. If she's so set on us drinking more, then she can pour."

Sylvia snorted and headed off as well. "Yeah, go on. She can take you to the living room."

Jo caught up with Pam after she took off her coat and wound their fingers together, smiling. "You seem like you've been having fun," she said.

"Mmm," Pam said. She tugged Jo closer and kissed her, hitting her cheek when Jo thought she'd aimed for her mouth. "Yeah, fun enough."

They settled into the couch before Sylvia came back. Pam tried to draw her feet up beneath her before frowning and crossing her legs at the knees instead, muttering about her boots again. Jo snorted and watched her; they'd spent plenty of time drinking together, but she'd never seen Pam out and out drunk like this. She crossed her own legs, tucking her thigh close to Pam's, and when Pam smiled at her, Jo put her arm around her shoulder, on the back of the couch.

"Here you go," Sylvia said, bringing them each a glass of red wine. Her gaze lingered on Jo's hand for a second, where she was cupping Pam's shoulder, and she smiled when she handed them their drinks. "I need to run to the bathroom for a sec, but I'll be right back."

Jo took a big drink of hers and then put it on the coffee table. "How do you know her again?"

"We used to be neighbors," Pam said. "About five years back. She had the apartment above mine."

Jo glanced around the living room — entertainment center, and a bookshelf, and some art on the walls. "Does she know what you do?"

"Some of it," Pam said, after a pause. "She knows what's on my business cards. She doesn't know what you do."

Jo nodded, and when Sylvia came back into the room, she leaned forward and picked her glass up again. "This is good," she said, and drank again.

"Told you it was worth staying for." She sank into a big armchair and grinned at the two of them. "I have to say it: you're pretty cute together."

Jo smiled, ducking her head, but Pam snorted. "Stop trying to butter her up," she said. "I know better than that."

"What?" Sylvia asked. "I didn't say anything."

"Yet," Pam said, and started smiling. "I don't trust you not to embarrass the hell out of me in about two seconds, though."

"About what?" Jo said, glancing between the two of them.

"Oh, just — nothing," Sylvia said, after looking back at Pam. "She was just very cute, earlier. And now she thinks I'm going to spill all the things she said about you."

"This is why I wasn't going to stay," Pam said. She drank the rest of her glance and nudged Jo's foot with her own. "You about ready?"

Jo still had some wine in her glass, and she sipped it again before saying, "Nope. I sort of want to hear what you've been saying, though."

Pam groaned. "It's not anything juicy," she said, shaking her head. "I can't believe you did this," she said to Sylvia, who held up her hands and laughed.

"Hey, not my fault you said it." She drank, then put her glass down. "No, it wasn't anything interesting," she told Jo, smiling. "Hardly anything interesting, really — no offense. I just said she seemed happy, and she said you were staying with her, and I assumed from there."

"Is that it," Jo said, glancing at Pam, who was blushing. "That doesn't sound so bad." Pam frowned at her, still flushed, and Jo shook her head and finished her glass. "But, you know, she's right. We really should get going."

Sylvia sighed but didn't argue about it this time, standing up. "It was nice to meet you," she said, while Pam got into her coat. "Pam should bring you back sometime."

"Yeah," Jo said, on the way to the door. She waited while Pam slung her purse across her body, and then Sylvia hugged them both before opening the door.

"Truck's on the left side of the driveway," Jo said, as they headed down the porch steps.

"Left from where we are, or from the street?"

"Where we are." Jo unlocked the doors and waited for Pam to open hers. "You sober enough to manage?"

"Yeah," Pam said, and got in. Jo waved to Sylvia after she started the engine, and then backed out once they both buckled up. She was careful of the small, sludgy snow piles still left along the curb in parts of the street that got less sun, but most of the last snowfall had melted away, and the roads were fine.

"You get everything you needed?" Pam asked.

"Yeah, pretty much," Jo said. "You can't really have too much silver, though."

"I guess not," Pam said. She leaned against the door, resting her head on the window, and Jo smiled at her.

"Did you eat already?"

"Snacked. I could go for dinner, though."

"Me, too," Jo said. She tried to think about what was in the fridge, and came up short. "What do we even have?"

Pam hummed. "There's a pizza in the freezer," she said finally. "I think. We could make that and have it with some soup, or something."

"There's soup?"

"Pretty sure. Made it a few days ago, right?"

"I guess," Jo said. She turned onto Pam's street and then into her driveway, and they headed inside.

"Soup," Pam said, once they got into the kitchen. She held a Tupperware container full of cold soup, and Jo rolled her eyes as she got the pizza out.

"Soup, okay, great," she said, and took it from Pam to pour into a saucepan. "The pizza needs half an hour, so I'm not going to put this on yet."

"Whatever." Pam hovered by the sink while she rinsed the container, then nudged Jo into looking at her.

"What?"

"Nothing," Pam said, and kissed her, slipping her tongue into Jo's mouth for a moment. "Just wanted to do that."

Jo laughed. "You should drink some water," she said. "The fun happy kind of drunk only lasts for a while."

"Hey, you're not the only one who knows about drinking around here," Pam said, but she got down a glass and filled it anyway. "Oh, also, are there any weird holiday traditions I need to know about, before we go to your place? Because I want to know about those in advance, if there are."

"Not really." Jo shrugged. "We had some stuff when Mom had the bar, but we haven't really come up with anything new since then. Most of the traditions needed a crowd of patrons for them to work."

"Maybe we should bake something to take," Pam said, and then frowned. "Or, I don't know, is that too obvious? Will your mom get that we're fucking if I show up with cookies?"

Jo laughed. "I really doubt it," she said. "Come on, we've got a while before this cooks. Come sit with me."

.

 

Pam was still packing when Jo loading the truck up, getting ready to go to her mom's place. She came back inside after she put her own gear away and leaned against the bedroom door, watching Pam walk back and forth between her closet and the open bag on her bed.

"I know you're there," Pam said, shaking her head as she came out of the closet with a belt in her hand. She rolled it up and put it in the bag, then turned to face Jo. "You're not very subtle."

"I wasn't trying to be."

"I meant in general," Pam said. "Although I guess it's hard to sneak around when you're wearing big boots like that."

Jo rolled her eyes. "I wear these boots all the time. They're my favorites."

"I can tell." Pam put one hand in the bag and felt around, then nodded and zipped it shut. "C'mon, I thought you needed to be on the road already."

"Trying to get rid of me?" Jo asked. She did need to get going, though, and she pulled her keys out of her pocket and jingled them a few times.

"Yeah, that's exactly it." Pam sat on the edge of the bed and nodded at Jo. "Get over here, will you?"

Jo came, standing between Pam's spread legs and leaning in to kiss her. She dropped the keys on the mattress next to her and put her hands on Pam's waist as Pam wrapped one hand in her hair, holding her there. She ducked down to kiss Pam's neck when they pulled apart, and Pam sighed. She stroked her hand over Jo's hair before pushing her away, so she stood up on her own again.

"I know it's last minute, but it's just a few days," she said. "And I can't just ignore something with reapers. I'll have them drop me by your mom's when it's done."

"Yeah, I know." Jo shrugged and then straightened, stepping back. "You're sure you don't want me to drive you?"

Pam raised an eyebrow. "They're already on the way."

She wasn't telling Jo who she was working with or where she was going this time, either. Jo bit her tongue about it and leaned in and kissed her again, then turned and headed out of the room. "Alright, I'm getting on the road."

Pam followed her to the door, and stopped her just before she opened it. "I'll call you when we're done," she said. "Tell your mom hi. And don't eat all the cookies before I get there, either."

"Course not." Jo paused, then wrapped her arms around Pam and hugged her. "I'll see you in a few days."

"Yeah." Pam kissed her, barely sliding her tongue through Jo's lips, then shook her head and stepped all the way back. "Go on, get out of here."

Jo laughed and headed out the door. Pam stood at the doorway while Jo started the engine, and then backed out. She headed down the street, and when she glanced in her rearview mirror, Pam was just going back inside the house. Jo smiled at her reflection, then turned her attention back to the road.

**Author's Note:**

> Make sure to check out the [art](http://bloodnfire.livejournal.com/151116.html?format=light) by bloodnfire!


End file.
